


Beacon

by glitteringconstellations



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Earth is conquered, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Return to Earth fic, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-01-04 00:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12158103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteringconstellations/pseuds/glitteringconstellations
Summary: An emergency mission to answer a distress call wasn’t unusual. The urgency in Allura’s voice wasn’t necessarily unusual, either—she was very much of the mind that Voltron was obligated to answerevery single distress callbrought to their attention. Being the defender of the known universe came with a certain number of responsibilities, after all.But seeing the pinched, pale look on both Allura and Coran’s faces when they converged on the bridgewasunusual. "The universe is vast even in terms of those planets still yet beyond the grips of the Galra. But…. the distress call came from the Terra Firma Quadrant.”Earth.





	1. some say the world will end in fire

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a particular brand of reunion fic, seeing as it's been three seasons and we've still seen hide nor hair of what's happening on Earth. I'm honestly surprised we've not heard of Zarkon/Lotor using Earth as a bargaining chip for the Paladins. Let's see what season 4 has to bring us I guess? In the meantime, I'm writing this without a real plan, so strap yourselves in and come along for the ride with me!
> 
> (Also, Lance's family is as labeled [here](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com/private/165610369454/tumblr_owo7exxdyI1wwtjk3), if you need the reference.)

The earth was a sea of white-hot flames and acrid smoke. 

The sky lit up with blinking star-like flashes Maria knew now to be hostile enemy fire upon her home. It made the already fiery evening sky feel even more ominous. The panicked screams of people around her rung in her ears, and she held her youngest daughter closer to her chest, gripping ever tighter to her son’s hand in hers as they pushed through the throngs. 

There were only fifteen transport class shuttles evacuating people to the Lunar Space Stations—she sent a prayer of thanks up to the heavens that one was in Havana—and she was going to make damn sure her children were on it. 

“Mamá, what about Papá?” the daughter who clung to the back of her shirt cried over the din. On her older daughter’s left, Maria’s fifth-born son pushed and shoved when people crowded too close. 

“Your father will be right behind us,” Maria consoled, though the lump in her throat belied the terror she, too, felt. Her husband had left in search of their two adult children and was supposed to meet up with them. How they’d ever find each other, she didn’t know. But her focus now was the four children she had with her. 

Her heart throbbed in agony. No, she would not lose another child this day.

There was no stopping a mother still grieving, and she pushed her way to the front of the throng, taking elbows in the ribs and suffering through strangers yanking at her hair, pulling her back. The fences blocking off the military base were heavily armed. On a normal day, the soldiers could be intimidating; today, they were outright frightening.

“Only approved persons are permitted past this point!” one of the soldiers bellowed. “Have your documents ready and we will get you on the shuttle as quickly as we can!” 

“Get us out of here!” 

“Come on, man, there are kids here!” 

“Don’t let us die!”

It was utter madness. Maria shielded her baby’s eyes when a man trying to climb the fence was shot. The screams and the shoving intensified, but Maria had a mission. An explosion rocked the ground beneath them—time was running short. 

Her son pushed a path clear and finally— _finally_ —they stood before the gates onto the base. The solider before them held his rifle out to block them. “Stand back.”

“Please,” Maria gasped, “you must put my children on that shuttle.”

“We already have a list of approved citizens to board the shuttle first. State your name, present your papers, and we will have you through shortly.”

Maria didn’t have any papers. That wasn’t going to stop her. “Sir, I beg of you, these children—”

“State your name, and present your papers,” the soldier interrupted, sternly. 

“Maria McClain,” Maria snapped, desperation tingeing her voice. “Mother of Lance McClain, cadet of the Galaxy Garrison Defense Force, and if you have any respect for the memory of my boy, _you will put my children on that shuttle_.” 

The solider gaped. The whole island had heard of Lance’s loss, of course; the whole world had. The international incident had brought down the heads of people around the globe in mourning for the three cadets lost. No one had had any idea that it would have been the catalyst for intergalactic war.

“Ma’am,” the soldier said after a long moment, his tone softening just a bit. To his credit, he did look rather distressed. “You have to understand that there is protocol that must be followed. I’m truly sorry for your loss, but—”

“Let them through,” a gruff voice said behind them. All six heads snapped up to the large soldier who’d stepped up behind the soldier, a bearded man of impressive height and wielded an even more impressive gun. He must have been an officer, judging by the varied medals fastened to his lapel.

“Sir,” the soldier saluted, but his face read confusion.

“Didn’t you get the memo, boy? They’re letting all the children on board regardless of papers.” He stared hard at the soldier, his tone brooking no argument. Maria couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, but she was grateful, and there was no time to waste. Ominous purple ships stood out against vibrant orange and deep indigo of the evening sky, the sky still alit with the firefight. 

“Seleste, take your sister,” Maria said, holding the girl in her arms out for her teenaged daughter to take. Seleste obliged, but her face lit up in alarm. 

“ _No,_ Mamá, we’re not leaving you—”

“You must follow this man and do as he says, _mija_ ,” Maria interrupted, turning to address all four of her children. She felt breathless that God was on her side in this most difficult time of need. “Gabriel, Clara, listen to your brother and sister. Seleste, Alvaro, take care of them. They will need someone to watch out for them while I’m not there.”

“Mamá, please,” Alvaro begged, tears stinging his eyes as his mother handed off Gabriel’s trembling hand to him. She shook her head. “Lance would never forgive us if we left you behind!”

“I’ll be on the next shuttle with Papá, Julio, and Isabel, okay? It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.” She pulled all of them in for a hug, pressing an urgent kiss to each forehead. “Now, go, _mijos_.” She looked to the senior officer, who nodded and waved her four children through. 

“ _Mamí!_ " Clara wailed, reaching out over Seleste’s shoulder. "No, Mamí, _no!_ "

“Mamí, come with us! Please!” Gabriel struggled against his brother’s hold, trying to reach their mother. Eventually Alvaro was forced to pick his brother up, kicking and screaming.

Maria watched with a breaking heart as the four of them were ushered through by the junior soldier into the line of people boarding the shuttle with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. She turned to the senior officer, who stood there, watching her. 

“Thank you, sir, thank you,” she gasped on a shuddering sob. He only shook his head. 

“I just want you to know, there’s no guarantee they’ll be any safer up there,” he said, slowly. And Maria knew that, she did. But this was their best option. She nodded anyway. The officer cleared his throat. 

“I never met the boy, but I have a feeling McClain would have made an excellent pilot.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder, and she bowed her head. “The young ones will be well looked after, madam, and we’ll do everything in our power to get everyone out of here to safety.”

Maria could only nod, tears streaming down her face. She thought of her husband, and her two remaining children, and her sister, and her parents, and prayed to God they were safe. But she had done it. Her babies would make it. 

She gazed up to the terrifying, darkening sky, and prayed.

They had to make it.

\--- 

Earth fell to its knees and bowed before the Galra before the week was through. 

\--- 

“Paladins,” Allura called, “please meet Coran and I on the bridge for debriefing immediately. We have another distress signal we must pursue.”

An emergency mission to answer a distress call wasn’t unusual, Lance thought to himself. The urgency in Allura’s voice wasn’t necessarily unusual, either—she was very much of the mind that Voltron was obligated to answer _every single distress call_ brought to their attention. Being the defender of the known universe came with a certain number of responsibilities, after all.

But seeing the pinched, pale look on both Allura and Coran’s faces when they converged on the bridge _was_ unusual, and Lance felt his stomach lurch unpleasantly. Allura especially was as white as a sheet. 

“What’s up, Allura?” Pidge said, adjusting her armor as she came into the room. She hadn’t picked up on the atmosphere yet. Smart as Pidge was, she was still the youngest of them all, and sometimes Lance envied the naivety that came with her age. 

Shiro held no such luck. “You said there was a distress call,” he urged, frowning. Whatever it was they had to tell them, it wasn’t good. And if Shiro was worried—and he was, Lance could tell—then Lance was extra worried.

“Yes, yes,” Coran said, gesturing to the control panel he stood before. “The Galra have invaded yet another planet, I’m afraid.” 

“Another?” Keith questioned, arching an eyebrow. “You mean there are planets out there other than Earth that they haven’t conquered yet?” Allura flinched, and no one missed that. Keith stiffened, going ramrod straight. “ _Allura_.”

She wouldn’t meet their eyes. “I’m certain there are, the universe is vast even in terms of those planets still yet beyond the grips of the Galra. But…. Yes, the distress call came from the Terra Firma Quadrant.” 

Cold fear settled in the pit of Lance’s stomach. Earth. 

Hunk nearly swayed. “You mean, Earth? _Our_ Earth? The one where our families still are?” He looked very green. Lance didn’t blame him—his thoughts immediately flashed to his parents, his siblings. The ones who must have thought him dead, after all these months.

Coran nodded gravely. “I’m afraid so, my boy. We received a transmission from an Earth vessel hailing itself the _Orion_ not even half a varga ago. It was a broadcast to all emergency channels, unfortunately, so we couldn’t respond.”

“That’s one of the Lunar Stations,” Pidge breathed. “People live in those, Allura. Civilians.”

“Yes, well, it seems we do have one small advantage,” Allura amended quietly. “The Galra haven’t seemed to have noticed the inhabitation of Earth’s moon. Granted, after that broadcast, it is very possible that the Galra know, now,” she added, her face still pinched as though the words themselves hurt her tongue.

Shiro took a deep, shaking breath, one that didn’t instill Lance with the usual confidence that oozed from their leader. “Can you show us the broadcast? We might be able to get more information out of it than you two could. No offense,” he added hastily.

Coran waved his hands. “None taken, Number One.” He turned to the control panel and tapped a few keys, before the transmission appeared on the hologram screen. A man Lance didn’t recognize in Garrison uniform appeared on the screen, looking harried. Behind him, about fifty personnel scrambled to maintain the controls of the bridge.

:: _This is the ILS_ Orion _, broadcasting to all friendly parties. If there are any out there._ :: The man cleared his throat. He had never done this before, Lance thought bitterly. Had never had to. :: _I am Commander Henry Kravitz, of the United States of America—er, of Earth. I am the commanding officer of this Lunar Station, and we are in need of immediate assistance._ ::

:: _Approximately two and a half years ago, one of our exploration teams went missing from one of the moons of Pluto. A year later, one crewmember from that team returned in a crash landing aboard an alien vessel, and promptly went missing from Garrison Custody._ :: Lance cast a sideways glance over to Shiro, who gripped the back of his chair so tightly the metal of it crumpled slightly under his Galra prosthetic.

:: _Three Garrison cadets went missing from the academy the same night of the crash,_ :: the Commander continued. :: _We attempted to make contact by means of the wrecked vessel. It took months of recovery and salvage and research, but we finally managed to get the ship’s communication functioning. We had hoped that we would find answers to our missing crew and cadets… but what we found was beyond our worst nightmares._ ::

“They’re talking about us,” Hunk murmured, wide-eyed and horrorstruck. Honestly, Lance could relate. That cold dread had settled deep in his bones, and he found, for once, he was completely speechless.

Pidge shushed him, eyes glued to the hologram. 

:: _…the ships arrived scarcely a fortnight ago, opening fire indiscriminately. We managed to evacuate approximately five hundred thousand people, worldwide, to the Lunar Stations before our bases were overrun. We have no communication with Earth any longer. We have no idea how many survivors there are, if any. We don’t know what the hostiles want. We have little in the way of defense, besides a paltry few turret guns. Our stations are hiding in the Moon’s shadow, at present, and this message is encrypted to only the emergency channels, but there’s no telling how long it is before we are discovered._ ::

:: _It’s a shot in the dark, but we’re hoping that if there are hostile aliens out there, there might be some friendlies, too. So please…::_ Commander Kravitz took off his hat, fury and fear clear upon his face. :: _If you see this transmission, if you understand it, please send us your aid. The future of humankind depends on it._ ::

The transmission cut out, leaving only a terrible silence on the bridge of the Castle of Lions.


	2. tell me truly, men of earth

The silence in the room became almost unbearable. Keith clenched his trembling hands into fists so tightly his nails dug into his palms. How _dare_ they attack Earth. They’d only even been interested in the planet to begin with for the Blue Lion! Why hadn’t they left it alone after that? 

The thought alone made Keith furious. He didn’t trust himself to say anything he wouldn’t regret, so instead he looked to his team, gauging their reactions. Hunk had slumped down into his chair, tears glistening in his eyes. Shiro stared blankly into the stars in the void the hologram’s absence left behind, his shock belied by his white knuckles where he hadn’t relinquished his grip on the chair in front of him. Pidge’s jaw and shoulders were squared, barely suppressed fury flashing behind the lenses of her glasses. Lance looked terrible. His whole body trembled something awful, and he had wrapped his arms around himself as though it would quell the tremors. 

Allura and Coran exchanged worried glances. “Paladins, I assure you, we’re going to do all we can to free Earth—” Allura started.

“It’s our fault.”

Allura blanched, turning to face Lance fully. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s our fault,” Lance repeated in barely a whisper, guilt marring his face. “You heard what he said. They were looking for all of _us_. If not for that, they wouldn’t have been tinkering around with that Galra ship.” He looked from Hunk, to Pidge, to Keith, who bristled. All of us, except for me, he thought bitterly. He bit his tongue—antagonizing Lance would do no one any good right now.

“It’s our fault the Garrison basically summoned the Galra to our doorstep.”

There was a long, tense moment where no one seemed to know what to say. Lance’s stature almost begged someone to challenge him. But no one would meet his eyes, the same guilt written clear as day on their faces. When it became clear no one else was going to say anything, Keith heaved a sigh. 

“It’s no one’s fault but the Galra,” he bit out. Lance’s head snapped up. “What, are you going to stand there and blame Shiro for getting captured? Or Pidge’s dad and brother?” Pidge stiffened. Keith pretended he didn’t see that. Him and his big mouth. “Or Blue for bringing us all here?” 

Lance looked horrified, like that hadn’t occurred to him. He opened his mouth to retort, but Keith cut him off.

“It’s no one’s fault,” Keith repeated. He held Lance’s gaze, daring him to argue. “There’s no point in playing the blame game.”

Shiro seemed to have collected himself, taking a deep breath. “Keith’s right, Lance. Besides, I hate to say it, but I think the Garrison would have looked into the shuttle I crashed, regardless of what happened after I crashed it.” He winced at the memory. Coran cleared his throat and picked up where Shiro left off.

“Precisely!” he said brightly, trying for optimism. “And, according to this Commander Kravitz, was his name? A large number of your kind have sought refuge in your Lunar Stations! That’s a good thing, yes?” 

“Coran, five hundred thousand people is less than a hundredth of the human population,” Pidge choked, ever the mathematician. “There are over seven _billion_ people on Earth.”

Coran deflated. “Oh… That does complicate things a bit, yes.”

“A bit?” Hunk said, his voice leaning toward hysterical. “ _A bit_? Everything and everyone we hold dear are being held captive by the Galra right now because they slipped in under our noses while we’ve been out here, a trillion light years away! I think it’s safe to say it’s more than just _a bit_ complicated!” 

“That is quite enough!” 

The shout startled all of them into a shocked silence. Even Keith jolted—they’d never heard quite that tone of voice coming from the Princess. After a beat of tense silence, Allura let out a frustrated sigh. 

“You must believe me when I say I understand that this is devastating news,” she started. Guilt gnawed at Keith fast and sudden, and he could see by the looks on their faces the others felt it, too. Allura must be reliving the worst day of her life, right now. “But quarrelling will solve nothing. There is nothing to be done about the fact that the Galra have conquered Earth. In fact, I am sorry to say I believe it was only a matter of time before the Galra looked to use it as leverage against us.”

“But I will _not_ let Earth suffer the same fate as Altea,” she continued firmly. “We have liberated planets from the Galra many times before. We can do it again. We are Team Voltron, after all.” 

The Princess said it with such conviction, squaring her shoulders and looking each of them in the eye. Keith felt a surge of confidence he didn’t know was possible, given the situation. She was right, of course. They’d done it already before, what was stopping them from doing it again? They could _do_ this.

“Right,” said Shiro, turning to his team. “You heard the Princess. Let’s save Earth.”

Slowly, but surely, determination set in on the faces of the Voltron team. Hunk and Lance exchanged a glance, no words passing between them but the meaningful look in their gaze spoke volumes. Nerves, and fear for their families. Determination to save them. Finally, they both nodded, and Hunk got to his feet. 

Pidge looked around, settled her gaze on Keith, who met her with a level stare. Keith nodded, too, and it seemed to bolster Pidge. 

“Okay,” she said, almost to herself. “Okay,” she said again, louder. “We can do this. Where do we start?”

Shiro looked to Coran, who raised his hands in deference. “You all are the experts of your galaxy. The Princess and I shall follow your lead.” Allura nodded earnestly in agreement. Shiro paused, then turned back to the Paladins.

“We should try making contact with the _Orion_ first. The Lunar Stations are sitting ducks out there. If we can get them out of there, maybe wormhole them out to a safer quadrant, then we can focus on drawing the Galra’s attention without the risk of them getting caught in the crossfire. Unless anyone else has any other ideas?”

No one said a word. 

A small, if not strained smile graced Shiro’s lips. “Good. Let’s get to work, then.” 

\--- 

“Sir, we… we’re receiving an incoming transmission!” 

Henry Kravitz had never been a religious man. But as he spun around and stared, as did his crew, at the engineer who had sprung to her feet in disbelief, the Commander felt as though he could believe in a higher power. Surely, this was nothing short of a miracle.

Or a trap, the rational part of his mind reasoned. They had no way of knowing who was on the other end of the line, with his communications to and from Earth scrambled. It could be _them_. In all his years, never once did he think he’d have a run in with aliens, of all things, let alone hostile ones. 

“Sir, your orders? Should we accept it?”

Still… They didn’t have much to lose. It was only probably a trap, against the very real threat of certain death.

“Put it on the main screen,” he ordered. “Make sure the connection is as encrypted as the Rosetta Stone.”

“Yes, sir.” 

The screen flickered into life in a flash of static and white noise as the engineer’s fingers flashed over her keyboard, adjusting the connection for the transmission. Kravitz nearly tapped his foot in impatience—it never took usually more than three seconds to establish a connection from Earth. Belatedly, he realized it meant that the transmission was coming from very, very far away.

Soon enough, a figure came into focus. A young woman stood before them, dark skinned with striking blue eyes and strange markings on her face. She looked remarkably human, and Kravitz might have thought she was, were it not for the pointed tips of her ears peeking out from behind strands of pure white hair. Behind her seemed to be the cockpit of a high-tech warship, if he had to hazard a guess.

She didn’t look evil. But then again, he hadn’t actually _seen_ the faces of the hostiles behind the guns that shot up his planet. 

So he waited for her to identify herself, eyeing her suspiciously. She didn’t hesitate.

“Greetings, Commander Kravitz,” the young woman said, her voice steady and regal, but not unkind. “I am Princess Allura of Planet Altea. We received your distress call and wish to offer you our aid.”

Excited murmurs broke out behind him. 

“We just sent out that distress call two hours ago!” 

“An alien princess?”

Kravitz held his chin high, nonplussed. “How do we know we can trust you? We have hostile aliens ravaging our planet. How do we know you’re not one of them?” 

The princess looked genuinely taken aback, as though she hadn’t expected that reaction. Good—keep the aliens on their toes. She briefly glanced to someone off-screen before regaining her composure. 

“I apologize, Commander, for giving you cause for concern. I assure you, we are staunch enemies of the Galra Empire, the monsters responsible for the destruction your planet is surely witnessing. My team is the Voltron Force, comprised of five human pilots. They have as much at stake in the survival of your people as you do.”

_What?_

The mutters of the crew turned to cries of shock, very similar to the shock Kravitz felt himself. There were human pilots out there? But humans had never ventured further than Kerberos, and the world knew how well that had ended.

“Let me speak to them,” he demanded, at length. If the princess noticed his hesitation, or if she took offense to his tone, she didn’t show it. She merely stepped aside and let a pilot dressed in black armor appeared. The man took off his helmet, and Kravitz gaped. 

“Shirogane?” 

Behind him, four more pilots in an array of colored armor lined up, all sans helmets. Except for the surly looking kid in the red armor, Kravitz knew these pilots to be the missing Garrison cadets. The ones the world thought had been blown to smithereens.

Well, this certainly was unexpected.

The crew of the _Orion_ was stunned into utter silence, Kravitz included. He had never met the young man in black, but his reputation preceded him, and Takashi Shirogane looked much different than the pictures ever showed him. Most notably, the deep gauging scar that ran across the span of Shirogane’s face had not been there the last time he’d been seen on Earth. 

Shirogane took his silence as permission to speak. “It’s probably a lot to take in right now, sir, but I promise you, the Princess and her advisor are on our side. They are not your enemy—the Galra are. We’re going to get you out of there.”

There it was again—the Galra. “Can someone please explain to me what exactly these _Galra_ are,” Kravitz barked, hating how strangled his voice sounded. “And what they want? And while we’re at it, can someone please explain how you five kids ended up piloting this—this Voltron Force?”

Shirogane shook his head. “There’s no time to get into detail, sir, much as I’d like to. Long story short, the Empire has been conquering worlds for over ten thousand years, draining planets of their resources and enslaving their people. My team is leading the rebellion to stop them, and I think that’s why they’re targeting Earth, now, after us being out here for so long.”

Kravitz could feel a headache coming on. He’d say this sounded insane, but he need only look out the viewfinder on the bridge back at the Earth engulfed in flames to know that this was very real. He took another long look at the paltry team of pilots on the screen, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And your team can extract us? How?” 

The engineer shot a look of disbelief to her commander. “Sir? You’re going along with this? We can’t just _leave Earth behind_!” 

“We don’t have a choice,” Kravitz snapped, turning away from the screen to glare at her. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re trapped here with our tail between our legs. If those things, those… those Galra find us here, we’re as good as dead. All of us, including all those people below deck we swore to protect.”

Cowed, the engineer hung her head, gripping her keyboard tightly. 

Kravitz turned back to Shirogane, expectantly. The young girl in green armor cleared her throat and stepped forward.

“The tentative plan is to wormhole in to the closest location we safely can without blowing your cover. Probably somewhere in Mars’ vicinity,” she started. Gunderson, if Kravitz recalled correctly. No, that wasn’t right—she was a Holt, they’d found that out after she’d died. 

Well, apparently died, anyway. He was going to need a strong drink after all this was said and done.

“—the Lions will draw their attention away while Allura and Coran hold the wormhole open to get all seven Lunar Stations out and through to safety,” Holt continued. “Worse comes to worst, we can use our particle barriers as cover. The Castle can take a pretty decent amount of fire, too, if need be. Or we could form Voltron.”

“Slow down, Pidge, you’re confusing the poor man,” the tall kid in blue chuckled. Kravitz’s head spun. Blue kid turned to face him, his expression sobering up. “With all due respect, sir, it’s easiest if you just follow the big blue circle. It’s pretty hard to screw up.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Kravitz. Assuming that all of their nonsense made sense to them, it was actually a pretty solid plan, except for one thing. “But what of the other six Lunar Stations? Is this wormhole going to be big enough for all of them, plus your fleet?”

To his surprise, Shirogane smiled reassuringly. “That won’t be an issue, Commander. Trust me.”

Not exactly generous with details, that one. Kravitz sighed. “What do you need us to do?” 

“Get the other Lunar Stations briefed on the plan, and get your civilians strapped in as securely as you can,” said Shirogane. “We’ll be there in less than an hour. Once we get you out of there, we’ll fill you in on the rest as best we can.”

Kravitz nodded tightly. He waved to the engineer to cut the transmission, the five pilots vanishing from the screen. 

“Get me the commander of the _Auriga_.”

\--- 

It had been a long, long week. 

Seleste sat on the cot next to her baby sister, singing softly and stroking the younger girl’s hair in hopes of coaxing her into a fitful sleep. Tear tracks stained Clara’s face, and Seleste knew she had a few of her own. It was only their second day on the _Orion_ and Seleste felt she’d cried enough tears to last her a lifetime. 

“ _A la nanita nana, nanita ella, nanita ella, mi niña tiene sueño…_ ” 

On the cot opposite her, Alvaro laid on top of his blankets, holding his wallet up so he could stare at the photo tucked in the clear pocket. She didn’t have to see the photo to know what it was, to know the fuzzy, smiling faces that stared back at him. Gabriel was perched on his knees beside Alvaro’s head, staring out the window into the stars. 

They hadn’t had the chance to see them, up until now. There were no windows on the transport shuttle, which was probably for the better, Seleste thought with a shudder. The last thing she wanted to see was one of those… those _alien_ ships up close. And then after three days of travel, they’d been herded into windowless quarantine chambers for a whole day to make sure they weren’t bringing disease into the station. 

From the dark side of the moon, Seleste had to admit the skies beyond her planet were stunning, expansive beyond her wildest dreams and so eerily calm. Deceivingly so. 

“Do you think Lance would have liked it out here?” Gabriel murmured, still staring. Seleste’s heart lurched, and her hand stilled in Clara’s hair. When she didn’t answer, Alvaro dropped his wallet to his side, turning his head to face his baby brother.

“I think he would have loved it, squirt. You know how he was, his head was always out in space.” He reached up and ruffled Gabriel’s hair for good measure.

Normally, Gabriel would have giggled and tried to knock his brother’s hand away. Seleste felt her lip tremble when he didn’t so much as twitch now. It was a gesture Lance always did. She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept singing, her hand resuming the gentle stroking.

“ _Bendito sea, bendito sea_ …” 

Eventually, Seleste trailed off and silence fell between them again, save for the low murmur of the chatter from the other evacuees. The _Orion_ wasn’t meant to house this many people, and the station had set up cots in just about every available inch of floor space to accommodate for the extra load. Even for Seleste, who was used to cramped quarters growing up in a house with six siblings, it bordered on claustrophobic.

When she was certain Clara had fallen deeply asleep, Seleste withdrew her hand and position herself further on the edge of the bed, facing her brothers. Alvaro had resumed staring at the photograph. Gabriel hadn’t moved. She sighed. 

“I should be down there with Mamá,” she confessed quietly, picking at the hem of her dress.

Alvaro closed his eyes and grimaced, before sitting up. “Sis…”

“I’m not a child,” Seleste pressed on. “I’m 19. They shouldn’t have let me on board. I feel so terrible knowing that Mamá is down there, probably all alone, and who knows where Papá and Isa and Jules are, and…” she gripped the fabric in both hands, fighting off the burning tears. “I should be down there.”

A moment later, she felt a hand over hers, and she looked up. Alvaro looked close to tears himself, but he smiled sadly at her. “I feel the same. I feel like a coward that I’m up here safe, not knowing where they are.” His eyes flickered over to Clara’s sleeping form. “But we couldn’t have let Clarita and Gabe come up here alone. And maybe you’re not a child, but I… I'm glad you’re here. I couldn’t do it by myself.” 

Seleste sniffled through a small smile. Trust her little brother to remain the voice of reason, even now when it felt like the end of the world. The familiarity was comforting. 

“Thanks, Al.”

Alvaro grinned, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Anytime, sis.”

She swiped at the tears in her eyes and cleared her throat. Gabriel must have heard all of that, but still, she had to put on a brave face for her baby brother. “Gabe, come away from the window now. Let’s try and get some rest, okay? Mamá and Papá wouldn’t want us to get sick.”

Gabriel didn’t acknowledge her. She frowned. He’d been so uncharacteristically quiet since they boarded the shuttle. She looked to Alvaro in concern, who leaned over and put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.

“Gabe?”

The boy finally turned over to look at them, and Seleste was on her feet in blink. He had a look of sheer terror on his face, a shaky hand raising to point out the window. Seleste and Alvaro both scrambled onto the cot behind him and peered over his shoulder. Seleste’s stomach churned in fear, and she reached for Alvaro’s hand without thinking.

No less than a full fleet of twenty alien battleships dotted the horizon, purple steel glinting in the starlight.

“I…” Gabriel stammered, petrified. “I think the bad guys found us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am absolutely blown away by the response this fic has gotten in just a few days. thank you all for your comments and your kudos! honestly, it's been the absolute best motivator. i still don't have a solid plan for this fic, hence the boring set up chapter, but i have a vague idea of how i want it to end. hopefully you'll stick around to see how it turns out! next chapter will be much more exciting, i promise. a few notes:
> 
> 1\. i was going to name the Commander Leonard Kravitz. i resisted. you’re welcome. also please don't ask me why he got the longest section in the chapter, i don't have an answer. he's not sticking around for much longer.  
> 2\. I edited chapter 1. most of it was just some typos and descriptive things, but i did change a few significant details including the timeline mentioned in the distress broadcast. please be sure to reread chapter 1 if you’re lost! don’t post unedited at 4am kids, i say as i post unedited at 4am  
> 3\. i’ve decided that this takes place between seasons 2 and 3, but Shiro never went missing, so there's no Kuron in this timeline and the paladin shuffle never happened. two and a half years have passed since Kerberos, a year and a half has passed since the night the team went to space in the Blue Lion. yes, Keith is still part-Galra, yes, it will come up at some point. ;)  
> 4\. all of the chapter names will have a common theme, see if you can guess what it is!


	3. quenchless was the charge he made

A gauge on the machine keeping the Galran Emperor alive trilled to mark the varga, and a poultice-colored fluid filled the tubes.

Haggar watched the oscillating pendulum as it swung in an endless arc, standing by her lord’s side. Lord Zarkon had yet to awaken from his injuries sustained in their last clash with the Paladins and their Princess. Fury seethed beneath her skin, as even still she felt the phantom pains where the whelp’s staff had felled her.

She would make the wretched brats pay for their grievous offense. 

A sharp knock on the door echoed loudly through the silence, pulling Haggar from her brooding. She frowned; she had given explicit orders not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Still, she crossed the room, her feet making scarcely a sound on the hollow metal and she slipped through the door, careful not to allow her visitor to see their lord in such a vulnerable state.

Before her stood a young Galran officer, head down and arm across his chest in deference. “Lady Haggar.”

“You had better have news of great importance, to have disobeyed a direct order, Lieutenant Teln,” Haggar said coldly. 

“Of course, I wouldn’t dream of it otherwise.” The lieutenant kept his head down a moment longer, before raising it and looking just below her chin out of respect. “We have located a planet with an ample source of quintessence, as you ordered.”

"Have you now?" Haggar was admittedly a little surprised by the competence of the soldiers to secure such a source without Druid aid, but did not show it. “Explain.”

“It’s a primitive planet in the X-9-Y sector, my lady, known as Earth by its inhabitants. The primary species is intelligent, if underdeveloped, but their number is staggering. Even without the repairs on the komar finished, the population of the inhabitants alone should be sufficient for your needs.”

Haggar bristled. Another reason to bring Voltron to its end—the komar had been her _masterpiece_. Decapheobs of work and research went into its construction, and to see it destroyed in so fleeting an instant felt as though a part of her had been seized and ripped out. 

Teln cleared his throat, realizing his misstep, and continued quickly. “We’ve already sent in forces to conquer the planet. As we speak, the planet burns. Extraction can proceed in a matter of quintants, by our estimations.”

“Very well,” Haggar said, collecting herself. The news soothed the roiling anger in her veins, if only a bit. The sooner the extraction could begin, the sooner Haggar and her Druids could set to work restoring their emperor. “Proceed at your earliest opportunity. You are dismissed.” She turned to leave.

The lieutenant stammered. “Actually, my lady, there is one more thing…” he faltered under her steely gaze. “I… there were a number of Earthlings that managed to elude capture. It was a very insignificant portion,” he assured hastily, “but for a time we were unable to detect their location.”

“Were?” said Haggar, curiosity piqued despite her annoyance. 

“We intercepted an incoming transmission and were able to pinpoint the location of the hiding Earthlings. The transmission was poorly encrypted, you see, and it was simple to track them to the natural satellite orbiting Earth. Its electromagnetic field camouflaged them from our initial search. But that’s not… what I mean to say, is…”

“Get on with it!” Haggar snapped, her patience wearing thin. 

Lieutenant Teln winced. “The incoming transmission came from Voltron. The pilots of the Lions of Voltron apparently all hail from planet Earth.”

Haggar stilled, the information clicking into place. She’d nearly forgotten that the Black Paladin, her Champion, had been captured in X-9-Y sector. It only made sense that he—and the other Paladins, by extension—were Earthlings. A wicked grin spread across her lips.

Now _that_ was certainly a useful piece of information. 

“And what, pray tell, did Voltron say in that transmission?” 

“That they planned to liberate Earth and were coming to escort the escapees to a safer location,” Lieutenant Teln reported dutifully. “Based on the transmission, we estimate their arrival to be within the varga.”

“Well then,” said Haggar after a moment’s pause. “I suppose the Paladins of Voltron should be given a _warm_ welcome home, don’t you think, Lieutenant?” The sickly sweet tone was a jarring contrast to her cold demeanor not a moment before. The young officer gulped.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Ready a fleet and dispatch them to the coordinates of those escaped Earthlings. I want full forces there, not just a flank. Be ready to intercept Voltron immediately upon arrival. Spare no one.”

Teln bowed his head and saluted once more. “Your will be done, in the name of Emperor Zarkon. Vrepit sa.”

The young officer made a hasty departure after that, but no matter. The furious storm within her had been mollified by the prospect of swift retaliation. Haggar would devastate Earth, humiliate the Paladins, and restore her lord all in one fell swoop, with the Lions of Voltron as her prize. When he awoke, her lord would be most pleased.

That wicked grin never left her face, as she resumed her post beside Lord Zarkon’s side. 

A warm welcome home, indeed.

\---

“Oh my god.” 

Hunk couldn’t believe his eyes. The minute they’d warped in to their solar system, Pidge had hacked into the Hubble telescope for surveillance. They hadn’t known what to expect when they returned to Earth, but it wasn’t this. 

Their home had all but been reduced to ash. 

The planet glowed red and orange from the embers of raging fires, smoldering ashes blanketing the planet in a thick, billowing clouds. Hunk’s eyes scanned desperately for holdouts against the hostile takeover, but it was no use—scarcely anything but a few glimpses of the world’s massive oceans could be seen beneath the fog.

For a long moment, nobody moved, too stunned to react. Hunk could feel the nervous nausea surface in the pit of his stomach, a dread radiating out to the tips of his fingers. He’d bet decent gac the others felt it, too, or something similar.

Then Allura cleared her throat. “Pidge, status report on the Lunar Stations,” she ordered. A tremble in her voice gave away that she must have been experiencing a dreadful déjà vu. 

When Pidge didn’t answer, Shiro got to his feet at his command terminal. “Pidge, status report.” Hunk had to admire the way that Shiro held his voice steady, even if he couldn’t hide the way he’d gone pale.

Pidge shook her head, as if to right herself. Her fingers fired away and the image of Earth flickered out of view, though Hunk would swear that the sight would forever be burned behind his eyelids. Instead, the moon came into focus as Pidge adjusted the settings on the telescope, and if it were possible, Hunk’s stomach sank more. 

“Please tell me those aren’t what I think they are,” he moaned, looking over his shoulder to where their leader stood. “Please tell me that’s not a fleet of Galran ships and that I need to see an eye doctor.” Shiro’s mouth tightened into a grim line. His silence spoke volumes. 

Lance groaned loudly. “ _Aye, que la chingada_. Don’t those guys ever give up? So much for sneaking the Lunar Stations out of there!” Hunk knew it was a front—he knew how badly Lance must be shaken up if he’d reverted to speaking his mother tongue.

“Why are they just… sitting there?” Pidge asked, warily. Hunk peered back up at the screen, willing himself to calm down. 

The fleet of Galran ships were lined up parallel to the flank that Lunar Stations made, angled so it was perfectly obvious they had the human crafts in their line of sight. But Pidge was right—for all the devastation the Galrans had wrought on Earth, they could have easily destroyed the Lunar Stations with little effort. 

“An ambush, most likely,” Keith muttered darkly. “They know we’re coming.”

“It will be near impossible to evacuate if the Castle is under any sort of fire,” Coran started, slowly. “We’d have to divert power to the shields, and then we run the risk of the wormhole losing stability.” He looked to Allura, who shuddered. They didn’t need reminding what consequences that would bear.

“We’ll just have to change our plans, then,” Shiro said after a long pause. “Pidge, Lance, you’ll be in charge of covering the Lunar Stations. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that there are civilians on board; they cannot take fire at any cost.”

Lance and Pidge exchanged a brief glance, and nodded resolutely. 

“Hunk, you guard the Castle. You can take the most fire out of all of us, so it’s up to you to keep Allura and Coran steady when they open the wormhole.”

Hunk gulped, but nodded. He could do this. This was their home, their people! He’d do whatever it took. 

Shiro turned to Keith. “You and I will try and distract them. Even assuming Zarkon is down, dangling the Black Lion in front of them will tempt them into following us. Hopefully.”

Keith started. “Shiro—!”

Shiro shook his head. “It’ll be fine. We’re just going to lead them on a goose chase, alright? Don’t engage them under any circumstances, unless you’re going down otherwise.”

Keith did not look happy about it, but he nodded anyway. Satisfied, Shiro turned back to the Alteans. “How long can you hold the wormhole open?” 

“Two dobashes, perhaps three,” Allura said. She gripped the columns on either side of her. “I’ll do whatever I can to give you all as much time as possible.” 

Shiro nodded resolutely. “Then two dobashes is all we have. We’ll cover you and let you know when we’re ready to open it up. Coran, if you could get Commander Kravitz on the comm and let him know to get the Stations into position?” 

“Consider it done, Number One,” Coran said, whirling around to his control panels. Shiro looked at each one of them individually, before reaching for his helmet. It didn’t escape Hunk’s notice that the knuckles on Shiro’s human hand were white.

No pressure, right? 

“Alright, team, let’s get to the Lions.”

\--- 

For all his collected leadership, if Shiro was being totally honest, he expected a total shit show the minute they flew into Galran chatter space. 

He expected right. 

Lasers exploded into sight as he flew the Black Lion past them as fast as she would go, Keith in the Red Lion a blur among the violet lights. The good news is, he and Keith had attracted the attention of a good number of the ships.

The bad news was, they hadn’t attracted enough. Lance and Pidge were under heavy fire almost instantly, as the Galrans had no qualms in aiming at literally hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Hunk and Coran were forced to join them, the four ships dwarfing the seven Lunar Stations with their particle shields against the battery of Galran artillery. 

Shiro grit his teeth and dropped the Black Lion into a barrel roll, barely dodging a particularly gruesome blast. The worst of it was, he could tell the Galra were just taunting them. They hadn’t even brought out the ion cannons yet.

They had to get the Lunar Stations out of there before that happened. 

“We can’t keep playing this game all defense,” Keith shouted into his comm, weaving in and out of the line of fire. 

“Two Lions aren’t enough to take on twenty battleships, and we can’t form Voltron if we’re still giving cover to the Stations,” Shiro barked, tone snappier than he meant it to. 

But Keith was right. They had to do _something_. Shiro looked desperately out at the other three Lions, still trying to no avail to draw away the attention of the artillery guns that were laying into them. Keith flitted into view, hesitating in front of the Black Lion for a second like he wanted to say something, but had to dart away at the last second to dodge. Shiro wasn’t as quick—he yelled as he took a direct hit, knocked back against the force of it.

“Shiro!” Keith sounded simultaneously helpless and royally pissed off. Shiro couldn’t tell whether the anger was for him, or at him.

“I said, don’t engage!” Shiro insisted, righting himself after the hit. “I’m fine, Keith. Keep going, everyone.” 

“Uh, I hate to be the Debbie Downer here, but there’s only so much ‘going’ we can take over here,” Pidge grunted into the comm. “We can’t take much more of this before we start losing shields!” 

“Does _anyone_ have any other ideas?” Hunk said. “Because we’re not going to be doing anyone much good if we’re reduced to space dust.”

Shiro gripped onto the controls tightly, still moving and still drawing fire, with five battleships on his tail. The Black Lion was still responding surprisingly well, considering Keith had all but left them wide open for that direct hit. Not that he’d ever blame Keith for that. 

Wait a minute. That was it. 

“Actually,” said Shiro, “I think I do. Keith, with me!” And he turned his Lion around on his heel, halting to a complete standstill and briefly throwing up a particle barrier. He still hadn’t drawn his bayard. 

When Keith drew up next to Shiro, the Black Paladin pulled him up on the visual comms. “Charge them like you’re going in for an attack. We’re going to swing them around so they’re facing each other, and then when I give the word, drop into a dive, alright?” 

Keith blanched. “Are you out of your _mind_?” 

“Yeah, usually Keith’s the crazy, reckless one!” 

“Shut _up_ , Lance!” 

“We’re going to use their own firepower against them,” Shiro pressed, ignoring Lance’s jibes for now. Realization dawned on Keith’s face, and his lips settled into a determined line. 

“Alright, I got it.” 

The two Lions faced the oncoming Galran ships, and in a blink, Shiro and Keith dropped their shields and charged in opposite directions. The ships tailing them followed suit, and they flew in a large arc until it seemed like the Lions were charging at each other. Keith grew closer and closer in Shiro’s viewfinder, until…

“Now!” 

The two Lions dropped into a hard dive at the absolute last second, only a hair’s breadth from colliding into each other. The Galran ships behind them had no such luck—the collision of the ten ships caused an explosion so powerful that Keith and Shiro were sent spiraling across open space. 

Even so, Shiro couldn’t help the smile when he heard Keith’s victorious holler in the comm. 

Ten down, ten to go. 

He wasted little time pulling his Lion out of a freefall, he and Keith all but sprinting to rejoin the fight. Now that they’d taken out so many of the Galra’s forces, their remaining comrades seemed thirsty for blood, and drawing their attention away from the others was almost too easy. 

“Now’s your chance, Allura!” Pidge cried. 

“Right!” 

The Castle dropped its particle barrier and flew out a safe distance from the Stations. Hunk followed close behind in the Yellow Lion and keeping himself between the Castle and maintaining his shields. Lance and Pidge spread themselves out so that they could jump in and intercept any stray rounds.

“Paladins, I must caution you against trying that trick a second time while the evacuation is underway!” Coran’s voice was strained. “An explosion of that magnitude could compromise the wormhole!” 

“Roger that, Coran,” Shiro affirmed. “Keith, you tiring out yet?” 

“Not a chance.” 

Keith sped off, five more ships tailing him away from the group, and Shiro followed suit. The adrenaline pumping through his veins propelled him forward, still riding the high from their earlier success as he dodged another hail of gunfire. He kept a close eye on the evacuation through the visual comm to the Castle in the corner of his viewfinder. 

One Lunar Station hobbled through the wormhole, weighed down by the number of people aboard. A second followed, then a third. Too slow, Shiro thought, and prayed Allura would be able to hold out long enough for all of them to get through.

Keith disappeared from his sight, and in the corner of his eye there was a twinkle of amethyst light. Hissing, Shiro whirled his Lion around and saw that he’d lost one of the ships that’d been tailing him. 

The ship was charging its ion cannon, its sight aimed directly at the fourth Lunar Station as it struggled to get moving. 

“ _Shit_ , incoming!” 

Shiro urged his Lion forward, hoping to ram it out of the way in time, but before he could even get close, the cannon and its ship imploded in a fireball. Shiro yanked back on the controls before he dove headfirst into the blast, aghast. 

“What the hell…? _Keith_ , I said do not engage! Did you not hear what Coran said?”

“That wasn’t me!” Keith said, sounding genuinely as startled as Shiro felt as he pulled up beside the Black Lion. Shiro whipped around and saw that Lance and Pidge hadn’t moved, still shielding the remaining Lunar Stations. The fourth one had made it through, and they were covering the last three.

“ _What is that?_ ” Hunk cried, apparently seeing something they didn’t. They didn’t have to wait long to see what he meant.

A ship whizzed past them both, not stopping for either Lion but heading straight for the ships tailing Keith. It was _fast_ , almost as fast as the Red Lion, and while it didn’t have a cannon, the heat the newcomer ship was packing was formidable. No wonder the Galran ship had gone up in flames. 

But the Galra didn’t stop to let them get a grip on the situation. Shiro and Keith were forced to scramble as nine other ships bore down on both of them, barely dodging a spray of gunfire from the Galran ships, and the gunfire that the newcomer was spraying at the Galra. 

“Pidge, can you see if you can tap into their comms?” Shiro snapped, trying to quell the panic. “We need them to stand down!” He glanced worryingly at the wormhole. Still one more Lunar Station remained.

“No go, Shiro!” Pidge replied, her voice strangled. “Their comms are encrypted in a language I don’t know, we don’t have time for me to crack it!”

“I can hold for another thirty ticks,” Allura chimed, sounding strained. “As soon as the last Station is clear we must get all of you to follow immediately!” 

“Can do!” Lance called. He dropped his particle barrier and none too gently slammed the Blue Lion into the last Lunar Station, sending it hurdling into the wormhole. “ _Vámonos_ , guys, you heard the Princess!” 

Lance and Pidge followed the Lunar Stations through the wormhole first, darting in almost as soon as the last one disappeared through it. Hunk seemed torn between keeping the Castle covered and not wanting to hold everyone up.

“Go, Hunk! We’ll be right behind you,” Keith hollered. 

“Right.” Hunk dropped his particle barrier and the Yellow Lion disappeared as well. 

The newcomer had helped Keith shake off a few of the ships tailing him, and he beckoned Shiro to follow. Shiro only spared a glance at his own gaggle of followers before following Keith at full speed, the Castle right behind him. 

Right before the wormhole closed, Shiro saw the newcomer manage to slip in out of the corner of his eye, and then they were traveling at warp speed and could see nothing more.

\--- 

“What the hell were they _thinking_?”

Pidge was furious. No, she was beyond furious. She was absolutely livid. Some no-name ship full of absolute and utter _fools_ had come in and started shooting everything up! 

She had practically ripped the helmet off her head as soon as the Green Lion had touched down in her hangar, storming off to the largest hangar to meet the other Paladins. She couldn’t deal with them on the comms right now. She was too angry to think straight, let alone hear them deal with the situation at hand.

They had all emerged in the gravitational field of the very first Balmera they had ever liberated as a team. Thankfully, everyone had made it through okay, although the commander of the _Andromeda_ reported several minor blunt force trauma injuries of her passengers thanks to the rough escort courtesy of the Blue Lion.

“Hey, you’re all alive, aren’t you? How about a thank you?” Lance had grumbled. 

But there was the little issue of the ship of complete idiots to be dealt with. Not only had they followed them through, they’d requested to come aboard. Allura, seeing as they _had_ kind of saved their asses back there, had allowed it, on the condition that they only send an envoy of three crewmembers.

Pidge could have seen red. 

She stormed through the doors to the hangar, helmet tucked under her arm. She was ready to blow a gasket, and she’d let them know it. “They have _some nerve_ , showing up to _our fight_ with guns a-blazing and absolutely _no consideration_ for how they jeopardized the _entire mission_ and put _hundreds of thousands of lives at stake_ …”

Pidge continued ranting as she made her way across the hangar, but it seemed no one paid her any attention. All four of the other Paladins had beaten her to the hangar, as well as Coran and Allura. The craft in question was parked neatly in the center of the hangar. As she neared the group, she could see two of the alien crew towering a bit over her friends. One of the aliens was of a kind she’d never encountered. The other gave her pause, and her ranting tirade trailed off. 

An Olkari? 

The other Paladins finally seemed to notice Pidge’s arrival, and the looks on their faces made her stomach lurch and hover somewhere in her throat. Shiro especially looked like he might pass out. 

“Katie…?” 

Pidge’s helmet slipped from her grasp. She knew that voice. She’d know that voice anywhere. It haunted her dreams every night.

The Paladins parted, and there standing between the two aliens, was Matt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not very confident about writing and pacing action scenes (or characterization for that matter), so if have any feedback, i'd appreciate it if you could leave a comment! despite all that, i was very excited to write this chapter. one reunion down, many more to go~ thank you again to everyone who commented, left kudos, and those of you who just took the time to give this a read! i swear seeing the reactions has left me having a giddy conniption multiple times, i'm telling ya.
> 
> a few more notes: 
> 
> 1) battleships here are smaller and more agile, like the castle of lions, but are still armed with artillery laser guns and an ion cannon each. the big big ships like what sendak commanded in the show are what I'm referring to as cruisers. and then haggar is on the mother ship. there's only one of those.  
> 2) i know lance is cuban, but he may or may not be using some mexican(-american?) spanish phrases in there. that's because that's spanish that i grew up hearing and that's what i know. that said, my spanish isn't great, so bear with me.  
> 3) i have a [tumblr](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com)! i usually also post my chapters there as well, for those of you who prefer reading on tumblr. it's a little empty now but i might post snippets there of what i'm working on in the future. feel free to hit me up over there if you have any questions!  
> 4) i made a [gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/doSQwiPTza0tW/source.mp4) of what i imagined the initial invasion to look like from earth standpoint. kudos to whoever can guess what it's from ;)  
> 


	4. he thought he kept the universe alone

Matthew Holt had seen a lot of things during his time in space. 

He’d seen aliens for the first time in his life (probably in the history of mankind, if he was being totally honest). He’d seen people fight to the death in the arena, and he’d seen his best friend dragged off to join their ranks. He’d seen prisoners and rebels and freedom fighters of every creed and color banding together to fight against their captors. He’d made countless friends, and lost countless more.

Never, in all his wildest dreams and ruminations, did he ever think he’d ever see his little sister again. In _space_ , no less. 

He watched as she skidded to a dead halt, her angry tirade dying on her lips as her helmet slipped from between her fingertips. His throat worked as he searched for words, dry and scratchy like he’d swallowed sawdust. For a long moment, nobody moved.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Matt choked.

That was all it took. In the time it took for Matt to blink, Katie had sprinted across the hangar and thrown herself into his arms. His brain managed to catch up in time to keep from losing his footing at the force with which she collided into him, his arms going around her tiny frame and gripping tightly. 

“Matt, I—oh God, I can’t believe it's you,” Katie sobbed, clinging for dear life on to the back of his cloak. “I knew you weren’t dead, I just knew it!” 

Matt couldn’t find it in him respond, the words lodged somewhere in his throat. A tentative hand came up to stroke her hair—it was so short now, and had she’d grown since he’d seen her last? It was a bizarre feeling of déjà vu, looking at Katie now. It was like looking at a ghost from the past, like staring in a mirror and seeing himself as he’d been when he left Earth that day so long ago. 

Katie leaned back, glassy eyed and trembling from head to toe. Her hands came up to frame his face, a gloved thumb tracing over the marred flesh under his left eye. “What happened to you?” she whispered. He had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about his scar.

“It’s a long story,” he managed at last, his voice cracking. Tears burned at his eyes and he pulled Katie back in, relishing in the embrace. She was really here. _In space_. With him. God, he hadn’t realized just how much he missed her. 

There was a rustle of movement behind Katie as the other pilots removed their helmets, reminding Matt that they had an audience. He looked up over Katie’s shoulder, and his heart could have stopped. 

There in black armor stood a man he long thought dead.

“Shiro?!” he croaked out. There was no way this was happening. No way. He’d _seen_ the bloodshed in the arena, he’d heard the whispers of how the Champion was no more. But there he stood. 

Katie seemed to sense his distress and pulled back, wiping her face roughly. “Shiro, get over here,” she called, her voice wrecked from crying. Shiro looked as stricken by the turn of events as Matt felt, but he obliged, coming to stand beside them. Matt’s stomach lurched when he realized they stood almost eye-to-eye now. 

Matt’s eyes traced over Shiro’s face, the deep scar that ran across the bridge of his nose, the tuft of white hair that hadn’t been there before. He felt Shiro’s eyes on him doing the same.

So much had changed since that day in the arena. 

Matt couldn’t stand it any longer, throwing his arms around his friend. Shiro hugged him fiercely, and Matt couldn’t help the few tears that leaked out. “You’re alive,” Matt rasped. “I thought you were dead. Before I… They… they were looking for a new Champion, and I—I thought the worst. Shiro, I thought you died in the arena.”

Shiro stiffened, but did not relinquish his hold. “No,” he said tightly. “I’m here, Matt. They couldn’t kill me so easily. I’m alive. And so are you.” He sounded like he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“Is this real life?” Matt muttered into Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro smiled, a watery little thing, and he squeezed even tighter. “The truth is stranger than fiction, I guess.” Even Katie managed to snicker, her eyes still bright with tears.

Beside them, his Olkari teammate gave a quiet cough. “I was not aware you were personally acquainted with the Paladins of legend, Officer Holt,” she said dryly, the antennae over her eyes twitching in bemusement. Matt jolted—he’d forgotten she was there. Matt reluctantly let go of Shiro and turned to face his team.

“I, uh. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know I was either, Nimern.” He looked to Shiro and Katie, who exchanged glances, before his eyes flit over to the rest of the pilots. Paladins, his mind supplied. Shiro and Katie were Paladins of Voltron. _The_ Voltron, defender of the universe. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. 

The young woman standing beside the other Paladins hummed slightly, a thoughtful look on her face. “Perhaps we should move this conversation to somewhere more comfortable. Proper introductions are in order, it seems.” 

Katie nodded in earnest, but the red-haired man on the woman’s other side frowned. “Princess, are you certain?” He seemed wary, and honestly Matt couldn’t blame them. He and his team had just kind of crashed their battle and tailed them through their wormhole, after all. 

The woman—a princess, apparently—smiled warmly. “We owe them our thanks for their assistance in evacuating the Lunar Stations, no matter how… unconventional their methods might have been. All that beside, they have Shiro and Pidge’s trust.” She gave the three of them a meaningful look. “So they shall have my trust, as well.”

Matt’s breath hitched. Katie was going by Pidge now? He looked at her, awe and something bittersweet swelling up inside of him, and she scratched behind her ear sheepishly. Another thing that had changed, then. She used to _hate_ it when he called her Pidge. 

“Right, then,” Shiro said, clearing his throat and putting on what was clearly his leader voice. “Matt, if you would collect the rest of your crew, we can move this to the conference room.” He glanced at the princess for confirmation, who nodded. “Pidge, would you and Hunk mind heading up first to set up the comms up there? We need to fill in the commanders of the Lunar Stations.”

Katie pouted, leaning closer into Matt, and he couldn’t help the fond smile that tugged at his lips. He ruffled her hair and her pout deepened. “We have plenty of time to catch up later. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’d better not,” she grumbled, but moved to fall in step beside the Yellow Paladin; Hunk, he presumed. Once they’d gone from the hangar, followed by the Red and Blue Paladins, Matt took in a deep breath and turned to his teammates. 

“Let’s get the crew.” 

\--- 

It was easy for Allura to step into the role of diplomat.

It was what she had been trained for her whole life, after all, and in the pheobs since she and Coran had reawakened, it’d been something of a comfort to her to fall back on the familiar role. Negotiations, peace talks—things her father had instilled in her that brought her joy.

But it didn’t change the fact that she was only one person, and now three separate teams looked to her for her leadership and guidance. The responsibility of it all… well, she’d be lying if she said it didn’t weigh heavy on her shoulders, especially with so much at stake. 

She sat at the head of a long table, joined by her team, the seven crewmembers of Matt’s ship, the _Renegade_ , and in the center of the room, seven different holograms for each commander of the Lunar Stations. Though equal in rank, Commander Kravitz had become the sort of de-facto leader among the Earthling ships by merit of having had contact with Team Voltron already.

“Shirogane said we’d get an explanation once we were secure as to _what in the hell_ is going on,” Kravitz was saying after introductions had been squared away, casting an eye over to the Black Paladin. “So let’s start with why I’m now looking at five people all of mankind thought were dead and a room full of aliens.” 

“Hold on a minute,” Lance said before Allura had the chance to speak, his lips curling into a frown. “In your transmission you said the Garrison were looking for the _missing_ when experimenting on that shuttle, not the dead. Care to explain that?” 

It was a valid point, Allura would admit, but she wished Lance would have some tact. Straight to the point, as always. A woman of petite stature and dark hair stepped forward—Binna Park, the commander of the _Cassiopeia_ , if Allura recalled correctly.

“We Commanders have been at the helm of these Lunar Stations for years,” she said. “We often aren’t filled in on the doings of the Garrison terra-side. When the Kerberos mission failed, when you cadets went missing, we were told the same things everybody else was.”

“You’d think you officers would have a high enough security clearance to be in the know,” Hunk interrupted, curiosity clear in his voice. “So what happened? How’d you find out we were out here?” 

“The invasion happened,” said Commander Howle of the _Perseus_ barked. “Apparently the shuttle investigation was strictly confidential to any non-essential personnel. We were only told the truth when they began the evac of Earth.”

Kravitz nodded. “Believe me, kid, we aren’t any happier about being lied to as you are.” Mollified, Lance sank back down into his chair. Allura took that as her opportunity to get the discussion back on track.

“Shiro, perhaps we should start with what happened on the Kerberos mission?” she suggested gently. She hated to do it, but it needed to be addressed. Shiro nodded, his lips tightened into a grim line. With Matt’s help, he described how the ill-fated mission ended up in their capture, and how they were separated after a time, first from Commander Holt, and then from Matt. His voice broke when he explained how he'd had no idea what fate had befallen the two Holts, until today.

Shiro skimmed over his time in the arena, pointedly ignoring a question about his prosthetic arm. Instead, he simply told them that the Galra lived up to their blood-thirsty reputation as far as that was concerned, and that prisoners and disgraced soldiers alike found themselves pit against each other. His shoulders hunched slightly in obvious discomfort, and the Earth commanders seemed to have the sense not to press the matter further.

Matt picked up where Shiro left off. “I got lucky. They pulled me from the arena for a while because of an injury,” he said. Matt offered up a comforting, teary smile in Shiro's direction, seeing his friend's face crumple at the memory. "I only had to fight a couple of times after that, before I ended up in a labor camp somewhere. They started funneling more and more prisoners into the camps when news of Voltron began to spread and the Galra's demands for resources increased." He rubbed absently at the scar on his cheek.

Allura’s heart broke for the two of them. They had suffered so much at the hands of the Galra—as had so many more. She clenched her hands into fists under the table. All the more reason to take down Zarkon’s empire.

“I was rescued by a group of rebels not too long after that, and joined up with them,” Matt finished. “They offered to take me home, but I couldn’t go back. Not without Dad.”

There was a stagnant pause, no one quite sure where to continue from there. Matt clasped his hands together tightly on the table, and Pidge leaned over and put a hand on top of them. Lance took one look at Shiro and cleared his throat, launching into an explanation of how he and Hunk had snuck out of their dorm the night the shuttle crashed. Hunk and Keith caught the hint, pitching in their own details on the events leading up to their discovery of the Blue Lion.

Allura listened in rapt attention. While the Paladins had spoke in passing of how they’d come to find themselves standing before her and Coran in the Castle of Lions, she’d never heard in such detail how the Blue Lion had chosen Lance as her pilot. She’d been too young to remember the original Paladins being chosen, after all.

Truth be told, she was a little envious. But she quickly pushed that thought down. They all had their roles to play in this war. This, heading the Voltron Force, was hers.

“Do you have any questions on what has been discussed thus far, Commanders?” she prodded when the conversation lulled again. Shiro sent her a grateful look for the reprieve. 

“Basically, these kids somehow got sucked into an intergalactic war that’s been raging on for ten thousand years, and your giant robot man thing is the only thing that can stop the evil emperor responsible for laying siege to our planet for shits and giggles. Am I on track so far?” Commander Lela Russell of the _Andromeda_ deadpanned, her expression utterly unreadable for the unsubtle sarcasm that laced her tone.

“That… is quite an oversimplification, but yes, that is the gist of things,” Allura conceded, struggling to keep her tone even. “We recently dealt a massive blow to the empire by taking out Zarkon. We believe Earth may have been targeted in retaliation because of the fact that Voltron’s pilots are human.” 

“If I may interrupt, Princess, we know that that is not the case,” chimed Nox, the giant of a weapons specialist that had joined Matt and Nimern earlier. “At least, it was not originally their intention.”

Allura sat up a little straighter, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the Paladins shifting in their seats. She shared a glance with Coran, whose moustache twitched as his mouth turned down into a worried frown. Pidge looked between Nox and her brother, bemused.

“What does she mean?” 

Matt couldn’t meet her eyes. “Zarkon is still alive,” he said at length. 

All the color drained from Allura’s face, and a cold dread settled deep in her bones. “ _What_?”

“How is that possible?” Keith yelled, pounding his fists on the table. “We completely destroyed his Robeast suit _and_ his ship! There was nothing left!” 

The Unilu flight engineer Friel crossed both sets of his arms in frustration. “Zarkon lives, albeit barely. That witch of his figured out a way to sustain his life where death is otherwise certain, somehow.”

“We’d been monitoring Galra radio chatter from a listening outpost a few star systems away from your Earth,” Captain Olia of the _Renegade_ supplied. “It’s how we found out about the invasion. We were the closest rebel ship, and we were en route to provide assistance as soon as we heard. We had backup coming, but we called them back when we learned Voltron was on its way.” 

“Your transmission was compromised,” said Officer Kigho quietly, one of the Scalderan twins. He looked to Commander Kravitz, who blanched. One of the other commanders swore loudly. “So if they didn’t know you Paladins were human before, they do now.”

Hunk looked from face to face, confusion written clear as day on his face. “Wait, wait, wait. So, if they didn’t invade Earth to get back at us for laying waste to their ship, why _did_ they?”

Thoughts flew through Allura’s head, and she barely could hear the conversation as it continued on around her over the rushing in her ears, speculations abound as to the reasoning behind the invasion. She hadn’t yet disclosed to anyone but Coran her discovery of Haggar’s true identity—a mix of shame and denial that an Altean would ally themselves with the one responsible for the murder of their king. But if it was Haggar’s magic keeping Zarkon alive, then the invasion had only one explanation. 

“Quintessence,” she blurted out, and all eyes fell on her. She clasped her hands under the table to keep them from shaking. “Zarkon has lived for ten thousand years only because of quintessence. It only makes sense that the witch Haggar would use it to heal him and bring him from the brink of death.”

“Hold on now. What is quintessence?” said Rolt Evetts, the commander of the _Bootes_ , his bushy eyebrows furrowing. 

“It’s a substance with the highest known energy per unit volume in the universe,” said Pidge. “It’s essentially life force in physical form. The Galra have found a way to harvest it and refine it for its use in fuel and for its healing properties.”

“But you destroyed the komar thing they were building,” Lance said, frowning in Allura’s direction. “They can’t harvest it without that, right? They’d have to go back to doing it the old way. That’d take too long.”

“Not from planets as a whole, no,” Coran answered, realization quickly dawning on his face. “But extracting quintessence from individual beings is much simpler. We Alteans had healers who would do it on a much smaller scale for diagnostic medical purposes, and then return it to the individual.”

“The Galra can’t do extinct Altean magic, though. Even the Druids aren’t that good,” Keith said slowly, and Allura could see he was putting the pieces together. She steeled herself to deliver the news.

“No, but Haggar is no Galra.” 

A stunned silence spread amongst the Paladins and the crew of the _Renegade_ , and the commanders shifted uneasily on the other end of the transmission. 

“What does that mean?” Commander Park asked. Allura bowed her head, and her silence spoke volumes. Shiro drew in a sharp breath.

“I thought you and Coran were the last Alteans, Allura,” Hunk whispered, his face pinched tightly in horrified shock.

“As did I,” Allura said darkly. The words tasted bitter on her tongue as she spoke them. “I only discovered the truth when I fought her when we last faced Zarkon. Only an Altean could wield quintessence in such a manner as she did, there’s no mistaking it. I do not doubt her Druids have learned the skill as well, under her tutelage.” 

“Zarkon is an ancient being,” said Nimern, her expression grave. “The amount of quintessence they’d have to collect in order to restore him to his former self… the results would be catastrophic.”

Pidge let out a quiet, strangled noise. “So that means…”

“They plan to use Earth as a reaping ground,” Keith finished for her, voice strained as the magnitude of the situation became crystal clear. “You said it yourself, Pidge. There are over seven billion people on Earth.”

“We have to stop them,” Lance choked. “It’ll be a massacre!”

“Matt, did any of the intel you and your team gathered give any indication of how long we have before the extraction begins?” Shiro asked, a slight tremor in his voice betraying his fear. 

Matt shook his head. “Nothing specific. Just that the initial phase of the invasion was scheduled to take no longer than two movements. Er, two weeks,” he clarified for the Earth commanders. “Depending on Zarkon’s condition, I don’t think they’re going to be taking their sweet time. I’d say it’s safe to assume phase two has already begun, or will begin soon.” 

It was as Allura feared. “We must act with haste, then,” she said. “Haggar must not be allowed to revive Zarkon. What happened on Altea must never happen again.” 

“We can summon reinforcements from the rebels,” Captain Olia offered, her cautious optimism cutting through the heavy tension in the room. “Te’Osh shouldn’t be too far away with her fleet. And I know I speak for all my crew in saying the _Renegade_ offers you our aid.” The rest of the crew murmured their agreement.

“Officer Holt is our brother in arms. We will not stand idly by to see his home destroyed,” said Kigho’s brother, Righo.

“I’ll see if I can get a hold of Kolivan,” Keith said. “I don’t know that he’d be willing to blow the Blade’s cover to join in a raid, but maybe he has some information he could give us that might help.” Allura nodded earnestly, though the way Friel’s expression shuttered at the mention of the reclusive Galra defectors did not escape her notice.

“As it stands, the Lunar Stations are the only functional ships Earth has to offer in its own defense,” said Dmytro Plushenko, the commander of the _Auriga_ sadly. “And they don’t have much to defend with. They were built to withstand fire from other human nations, not highly advanced alien weaponry. Not to mention, we’re running low on fuel and supplies, and our atmosphere generators are being overtaxed for being well past the Stations’ intended capacities.”

Pidge took a steadying breath. “I could probably augment the fuel systems to run on Balmeran crystal power instead of traditional oil within a quintant or two, if I had help,” she suggested. “Compared to the Castle, the Stations are pretty small, so they wouldn’t need crystals as large as the one we needed before.”

Hunk perked up, leaning forward in his seat. “Shay mentioned that we could get crystals any time we needed them. We’d just need to unload the Stations before we do any work on them.”

“Would these Balmerans be willing to give refuge to a major city’s worth of people?” asked Commander Kravitz, skepticism plain as day in his voice. 

“It’s worth asking, at least,” Shiro conceded. “Their extensive cave network is ample shelter, and it’s got a breathable atmosphere. The Balmerans are kind and nurturing, so I don’t think they’re going to turn us away. If not all of them, we can always split up and take some of the refugees to Arus and some to Olkarion. We have allies all over now, and since we’ve got the teludav fully operational again it wouldn’t take long.”

Nimern sucked in a shocked breath at that. “Olkarion is liberated?” she asked in disbelief, gripping the table. 

Shiro blinked. “You didn’t know? We ousted the Galra on Olkarion months ago. Without their help, we wouldn’t have been able to take on Zarkon when we did.” Nimern sagged with relief into her chair.

“Thank the stars.” 

“That settles the refugee issue, but not the firepower issue, then,” said Commander Russell, scratching her chin in thought. Coran wiped a tired hand down his face.

“There’s not much we can do in a matter of quintants for that, I’m afraid,” he said. “The technology is just not compatible. You’d be better off letting Number Five fix the fuel problem and then focus on tending to the civilian Earthlings in your care while we take on the Galra.”

“So you’re saying we should just sit on our asses,” growled Commander Evetts. “You can’t expect us to just wait around while our people are being treated like cattle for slaughter! We’re soldiers, for God’s sake!” 

Allura rose from her chair, hoping the action would serve to calm, rather than antagonize. She understood where he was coming from, after all. “With all due respect, Coran is right. Your people will need someone to guide them. You’ve all lost your home, and you’re galaxies away from everything you know, are you not? What will they do if the only leaders they have to look to leave them on an unfamiliar planet?” 

Commander Evetts looked torn, like he wanted to say something more. All of them looked as if the last thing they wanted to do was leave their people stranded, but Allura knew the feeling of being honor-bound to fight. She sighed. 

“This is not your war, Commanders. I am truly sorry you were drawn into it. You need not feel obligated to fight this battle, knowing you would fight in vain. There is no shame in admitting when you are in need of help. Let us be that help.”

“…very well,” Commander Kravitz said after a stagnant pause. He gave a brief look over his comrades before turning back to the transmission. “We will follow Voltron’s lead on this one.”

Allura met the eyes of every individual around the room, relieved to see the same level of determination in every being present. Even now, the burden she felt at leading the fight against the Galra was ever present at the edge of her thoughts, and she felt her father’s absence sorely. She looked to Coran last, seeking his guidance, who nodded. His eyes spoke what his words did not-- _we stand with you, Princess._

They would save Earth. They _would_.

\--- 

Not for the first time, Colleen cursed the fact that she lived so close to the Garrison. 

The reason had been so much simpler, years ago. She just didn’t like the shuttle noise and air traffic that came from living in the vicinity of an aeronautical launch field. But it kept her close to her husband and her son, and her daughter longed to join them there, so she put up with it. 

After the Kerberos tragedy, she hated it for the reminder of what she had lost. Hated looking out her window every morning and seeing shuttles take off and land, knowing her family would never be on one of them. After the Sonoran Desert incident, she hated it for costing her what family she had left. 

Now, she cursed the fact that she lived right next to ground zero of what was surely the start of the next world war. 

The Garrison was gone; only smoldering embers and rubble remained after the bombs had dropped. She was fairly certain her home hadn’t fared much better, as she huddled in the storm cellar with the family dog and the elderly neighbor woman from next door. She’d collected the poor woman and taken shelter as soon as the first explosion had roared through, shattering every window in a twenty-mile radius.

The lights kept flickering on and off, and the emergency broadcasts on the weathered radio had long since ceased. Not much they could do for her, anyway—they hadn’t even told her _who_ had started dropping bombs. Just to take shelter and stay there until the all clear was given. 

It was going on a week and a half since they’d taken refuge from the fighting, and Colleen was worried about their supplies running low. Sweat trickled down her face; the temperature in the cellar had been steadily rising for the last day and a half or so. The ventilation pipes must have been blocked by rubble, and her attempts to get the door open from their side were in vain. They were trapped.

“Come down from there, dear. You’ll hurt yourself,” the old woman called from the cot Colleen had made for her on the floor. Rover curled up sleeping in her lap. Colleen sighed and stepped off the ladder. 

“I’m sorry, Florence, I just can’t get it open,” she sighed, carefully sitting down on the open space beside her. Florence offered her a half-empty bottle of water, but she waved it off. “We should save it.”

The hours stretched on, mostly in silence. Occasionally, Florence would hum a verse or two of a church hymn, trying to keep their spirits up. Colleen would try the door again every so often, but it still wouldn’t budge. 

The first sound came when both Colleen and Florence had dozed off. At first, Colleen thought she might have been dreaming, her mind making up the noise of shifting rubble. But then the sound came again, and then once more. 

Could someone be coming to rescue them?

“Hello!” she called, getting to her feet and moving to stand beneath the cellar door. “Hello, can anyone hear me? There are people trapped down here!” There was talking filtering down now, a definitely the sound of rocks being thrown. Florence stirred behind her. 

“Oh goodie, someone’s found us,” she mumbled, wiping the sleep from her eyes as she sat up. 

Then Rover started growling at the door. 

Colleen blinked at him. Rover was by no means vicious dog—Samuel had always joked that the mutt would make friends with any intruders that might have come calling—so she had never once seen him bare his teeth in such a way. He growled so loudly, positioning himself in front of Colleen, and an uneasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as goose bumps rose up her arms.

“Rover, what’s wrong, boy?” 

Heavy footfalls fell on the cellar door, indicating that whoever was on the other side had cleared it enough to open. And open it they did. Colleen held an arm up to shield her eyes from the sudden brightness. When her eyes adjusted, she lowered the arm, only to throw both hands to her face. A startled shriek escaped her and she recoiled back away from the cellar door.

Two creatures, nearly eight feet tall and purple, stared down at her with big, menacing yellow eyes, rifles nearly as big as she was tall trained on her.

“In the name of Emperor Zarkon, you are ordered to comply. Noncompliance will result in termination.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was hoping to get to the next reunion in this chapter, but alas, allura's section got away from me. this chapter is the longest yet, by far, so i figured i'd cut it short here. i know there are a _lot_ of original characters introduced here, but don't worry, you don't really have to keep track of them. i just felt weird not naming them. there were even a few familiar faces in there, especially at the end 8D this is just a holt family chapter, i guess.
> 
> so a slower chapter this time around, but i had to get through the nitty gritty before we can move on to the next stage, which is the liberation of earth! again, pacing (and editing, this is unbeta'ed) is a big concern of mine here, so if you have any comments or critiques, i'd love to hear them. thank you again so, so much for all the love you've given this fic!!! hopefully the next chapter won't take another month. adulting sucks.
> 
> edit: friendly reminder that i do have a [tumblr](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com)! hit me up over there if you have any questions~ i do post previews of beacon there occasionally~


	5. and blind me to a standstill

A hooded figure leaned back in his seat, watching the transmission with no small amount of amusement. The witch’s fury was tangible even with no sound echoing from the feed, the simpering pilots kneeling before her bearing the full force of her wrath at their failure to capture the Lions. It was her failure, really. She, of all beings, should know better than to underestimate the forces behind Voltron. But no matter. The Empire would be rid of a handful more incapable soldiers in a matter of moments. 

What was her loss was his gain, however. He would gladly take the intel learned from her and use it to his advantage. Getting access to the intercepted transmission from Voltron took no effort at all, and with a flick of his hand he swiped off the transmission of the trial to more pertinent matters.

Still images of each of the Paladins without their helmets popped up on the screen before him, each isolated and labeled with the amount of information he knew. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. That was where the witch had failed; she knew too little on the Paladins, and cared little more. Knowing the enemy, learning their weaknesses and manipulating them… that was where victory lie. 

He pushed a button on the console, and before long the door behind him swung open with a hiss. Two soldiers entered, standing a respectful distance behind his chair. “You called for us, my prince?” 

The figure lowered his hood, white tendrils of hair falling over his shoulders as he spun around in his chair. “Ah, good, Acxa, Ezor. Ready the ship and alert the crew; we’re going on a brief reconnaissance mission.” 

The general Acxa bowed her head in deference, but still raised an eyebrow. “Sir?” 

With a grin, the prince gestured to the images still hovering above the command console. “We’re going to pay Earth a visit and see what we can’t learn about our friends, the Paladins.” The generals hesitated, exchanging a glance.

“No disrespect meant, Prince Lotor, but didn’t Lady Haggar ask you to oversee the extraction to restore the Emperor?” Ezor asked, confusion coloring her tone. Lotor snorted derisively. 

“I have no interest in being an errand boy for the witch. We have much more pressing matters to attend to.” The two generals blanched at Lotor’s flippant dismissal of his orders. His grin turned quite wicked. “It would please my dear father greatly if he were to return to find Voltron on its knees before us, would it not? And seeing as how previous attempts have fallen dreadfully short, I think it is high time we tried… a different tactic.”

Ezor cast another sideways glance to Acxa, who bowed her head once more and saluted. The second general squeaked and followed suit.

“Vrepit sa, your highness.”

The generals saw themselves out, leaving Lotor to his thoughts. He spun back around to face the console, eyes roving over the information again. His gaze lingered on the image of the Black Paladin. Beneath it, under the caption ‘other titles,’ was written, “Champion, Shirogane.” 

The image for the Green Paladin had a similar label, only beneath it was simply written, “Pidge.” The other Paladins had no captions. 

He had their faces. Now, he just needed their names. Then the fun could _truly_ begin.

Lotor laced his fingers together and propped his chin on them, that wicked grin never leaving his face as he considered his next course of action.

“What secrets does your planet hold, Paladins…?” 

He couldn’t wait to find out.

\--- 

The plan, at least in the interim, was threefold. 

Keith and Coran, and Allura and Shiro, were paired off and tasked with escorting two Lunar Stations each to Arus and Olkarion and offloading the refugees there. Once unloaded, the locals had volunteered to guard them while the empty Lunar Stations and their crews returned to the Balmera for repairs. One human per team, Shiro insisted, to make the transition easier for the refugees.

Hunk, Pidge, and Matt would then lead the work on the Lunar Stations on the Balmera with the engineers from Matt’s crew. With the amount of hands on deck, it would only take a couple of days.

Which left Lance, who was told to help out with offloading the remaining three Lunar Stations on the Balmera so that the others could get to work right away. And by help out, they meant “monitor,” and by monitor, they meant “babysit.” Lance sighed. 

Logically, he knew the refugees couldn’t be left here with crippled Stations. How they’d managed to fit and sustain nearly eighty thousand people per Station for almost three weeks was beyond him. He knew that they had to make sure that the refugees were taken care of before they could storm back in and fight to save Earth. 

He _knew_ that.

But for every minute they spent here, another minute passed on Earth under the thumb of the Empire. Another minute passed where his family was in danger, and he hated it. Hated how it sent his skin crawling, not knowing if they were okay. Every nerve in his body itched to just hop in his Lion and go down to Cuba and tear down every last one of those God-forsaken Galra that stood between him and his family.

Without much thought, Lance looked over to where Hunk, Pidge and Matt stood under the starboard wing of the _Orion_. Pidge was pointing up at something inside the panel they’d removed, gesturing animatedly as Matt peered up with a curious look on his face. His heart constricted in his chest. 

He was happy for Pidge, he really was. But shame tasted bitter on his tongue that he was even remotely jealous of her for finding her brother. 

Shaking his head, he turned back to the data pad in his hands. It was wishful thinking, but he’d been scanning through the passenger logs, looking for any sign that maybe his family had managed to escape. So far he’d scrolled through the entire logs for both the _Orion_ and the _Perseus_ , to no avail. There were just too many passengers for him to look through them all. 

Even so, he continued scrolling, looking for any sign of the name _McClain._ It wasn’t like he could really do much else, anyway.

“’Scuse me, mister?” 

A tug on his elbow jolted him out of his thoughts. Lance blinked down, seeing a little boy, maybe nine or ten years old, peering up curiously at him through shaggy brown curls. Behind him, another boy with a black bowl cut about his age stood a few paces back, a nervous, shy look on his face.

“Are you one of them who fought in those big robot lions and chased the bad guys away?”

“Uh, yeah?” Lance raised an eyebrow. He thought that was pretty obvious, given the armor, but on second thought, the kid probably didn’t know any better.

The boy’s face lit up, and he turned to his friend. “See, dude, I told you so!” The shy kid couldn’t help the excitement, either, and he scooted closer to his friend. “That’s so cool! Which one did you fly? What’s it like out there? Have you fought the bad guys lots of times? Can you tell us, pretty please?” 

Something about the earnest look in the kid’s eye had Lance’s stomach doing a funny little flip. This kid reminded him so much of Gabe, it wasn’t even funny. It brought a bittersweet smile to his face, and he knelt down so he was eye level with the two boys. 

“Sure, kid, I can tell you. What’re your names?”

“I’m En, and this is Leo.” Leo didn’t say anything, but he gave a small wave. 

“Well, En and Leo, I’m Lance. I’ll bet you saw the fight from the windows of the Lunar Station, huh?” The excitement on both their faces dulled slightly, and Leo wrung the ends of his shirt in his hands. 

“Uh-huh.” 

Lance set the data pad aside and patted them each on a shoulder. Time to change the subject. “You’re both very brave. It’s pretty scary, though, fighting the bad guys. Are you sure you want to hear the story?” He lilted his tone in a playful challenge, one he’d used with his baby brother time and time again to get him riled up. 

He grinned when it worked for the boys, too. “Heck yeah, we are!” En cried, pumping his fists. Bingo.

“Alright. Let’s go find somewhere we can sit and be more comfortable, then.” He got back to his feet, a hand still on a shoulder each as he directed them to an outcropping of rocks. 

Maybe there was something he could do, after all. 

“So, I pilot the best and most beautiful Lion of the bunch, the Blue Lion…”

\--- 

“Well, would you look at that,” Hunk chuckled, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. 

Pidge peered down from where she’d climbed up into the panel of the _Orion_ they were working on, a smudge of grease across her nose. “Look at what?”

Hunk pointed, and Pidge ducked down further to see a group of kids crowded around Lance a couple hundred yards from where the _Orion_ was docked. He was gesturing wildly and making exaggerated faces, and though they couldn’t hear what he was saying, it was clear the kids were hanging on to every word with bated breath. Pidge snickered. 

“Somehow, I am completely unsurprised that he found a way to be the center of attention, _again_ ,” she said with exasperation as she righted herself, though Hunk didn’t miss the fond smile that passed her lips. 

“He’s always been good with kids,” Hunk commented, handing her up a wrench. At Matt’s confused look, Hunk continued, “Comes from a big family. Lots of siblings and little cousins to look after.”

He paused, a worried frown coming to settle on his face. “It’s probably a good distraction, for him. I’ll bet he’s worried sick about them.” 

An uncomfortable silence fell over them, Pidge’s hands stuttering on the panel slightly. Hunk could see the way she glanced down at Matt, the guilt in her expression speaking a thousand words. 

_It’s not fair that I have my brother, while the rest of you still suffer_ , her eyes seemed to say. The look lingered only a second, before she turned back to her work, hands moving with a bit more force than strictly necessary. Hunk exchanged a brief glance with Matt, his own concern mirrored in the other’s face.

“Hey, it’ll be fine,” Matt said gently. He reached up and patted Pidge’s knee where it hung out over the lip of the grate she sat on. “We Earthlings are pretty tough. Look at what all _we’ve_ been through, and we’re still here.”

“Yeah,” Hunk chimed. He needed put the kibosh on Pidge’s guilt, right then and there. “We’ll get down there, kick some serious Galra butt, and blast them all the way back to the Meridian System. They won't know what hit them. In the meantime, have you _met_ Lance’s mom? If you think he’s a sharpshooter, you should see his mom armed with a slipper. I pity the Galra that tries to mess with her.” 

Pidge snorted, a smile tugging at her lips despite herself. Hunk grinned victoriously, turning to Matt. He could keep this feel-good train rolling all day long, if he wanted to. He figured they could all use a good laugh right about now. “You should have him tell you the stories sometime. His impressions of his mom are spot on. ‘ _Te calmas o te calmo, mijo_!’” He pitched his voice up in a terrible version of the tiny Cuban woman. This time Pidge belted out a laugh, and Matt joined in. “My mom thought she was hilarious. One time me and Lance were calling home at the same time, and our moms ended up taking over the video feeds and talking to each other the whole time.”

“If you think that’s bad, we got scolded by Dad _from space_ all the time,” Matt said, leaning back against a support pillar, mirth on his face. “We weren’t supposed to be in contact when he was out on missions, but we used a quantum frequency to keep in touch. He’d _still_ remind us that bedtime was ten. Mom didn’t have the heart to enforce it, though. Probably because she wanted to hear from him, too.”

“What Dad didn’t know…” Pidge murmured. Silence fell between them again, this time not as tense as before. Hunk chanced another glance up at Pidge, relieved to see she didn’t look as troubled as before. If she noticed him looking, she didn’t show it, clearing her throat. “We should probably see if everyone is off by now so we can move on.” 

Matt nodded, reaching for the handheld comm. “Commander Kravitz, this is Officer Holt. Have all passengers disembarked the _Orion_?”

Static crackled over the line before a voice came through. “Negative, Officer. We’re just now processing the last of the unauthorized passengers.”

The three of them shared an uneasy look. “Stowaways, sir?” Matt asked. 

“Unlikely. The soldiers were given orders to use lethal force on trespassers who tried to sneak aboard down at the bases.” A collective wince swept over them. “It’s mostly kids without guardians. Less than a hundred, but enough to be significant. More than likely, a sympathetic officer granted them passage. We’re not detaining them, given the circumstances, but we do need their names so we can keep track of all the refugees. We’ve processed most. The rest will be off shortly.”

Well, that’s a relief, Hunk thought with a shudder. Detaining children… definitely would not have gone over well with the rest of his team. Matt quickly signed off the comm with an affirmative, blowing out a sigh as he sat it back down on the ledge next to Pidge.

“So, what should we do now, then?” he asked. Pidge hummed thoughtfully. 

“I dunno. What do you think, _Officer_?” Hunk blinked up at her. Her face was a picture of innocence, but a mischievous twinkle sparkled in her eyes. He guessed she was the one trying to lighten the mood, now. 

Matt took her bait, puffing up in mock offense. “You got a problem with me outranking you, kiddo?” Pidge kicked her leg out like she was going kick him, but instead just let it dangle loosely.

“Nah, just wondering who decided it was a good idea to make you an officer. It certainly wasn’t for your tactical combat skills. You’re a terrible pilot, you know.” 

Matt waggled his eyebrows at her. “Must have been my rugged good looks, then,” he said, stroking his chin.

Pidge groaned. “Ugh! You sound just like Lance.”

Whatever Matt was going to say, he never got the chance. A shrill shriek split the air, then, and all three of them snapped to attention. Pidge leapt down from the inner panel and on her feet in a heartbeat, bayard at the ready. The scream seemed to come from the opposite end of the _Orion_ , where the loading bay was.

Lance had heard the scream, too, his story for the kids cut short. From his position, Lance had a clear view of the loading bay, but even from this distance, Hunk could see Lance’s eyes going wide as saucers. He could see him going stiff as a board, could see his friend’s lips move and know without hearing he was saying, “Oh my god.” 

The scream came again.

“Lance! _Lance_!!”

Hunk had scarcely blinked, when Lance started sprinting toward the loading bay. Snapping out of it, Hunk felt his feet moving before his brain caught up, Matt and Pidge both on his heels. Lance was fast, but he’d never seen him run this fast before. He disappeared behind the curve of the Station, and Hunk heard him cry out, spurring his feet faster. 

When they came around the bend, they drew up short. Lance had fallen to his knees, clutching two children to his chest in an embrace so tight he hunched over them, nearly pressing his forehead to the ground. Paces from him, two older teens stared, wide-eyed and disbelieving.

Pidge inhaled on a sharp gasp, her hands flying up to her face. Hunk could relate, his heart hammering in his chest. 

“His siblings,” Hunk breathed. Somehow, by some stroke of luck, Lance’s siblings were here. Were _safe_. What were the odds? He couldn’t help the elated smile that crept over his face. Matt laughed incredulously. 

“No way.” 

They watched as Lance got to shaky feet, still cradling his baby brother and sister in each arm. He closed the distance between the other two, their eyes still wide and unblinking and quickly filling up with tears. Lance’s older sister moved first, throwing her arms around him and gripping his head, tucking it under her chin as the first tears fell. His brother wasn’t far behind, pulling them all into a bear hug. Hunk could hear Lance’s muffled sobs somewhere in the dogpile, and it wasn’t long before someone’s knees gave out and the whole lot of them were on the ground. 

“ _No puedo creerlo, estás aquí, estás vivo..._ ” his older sister wept. “ _Gracias a Dios, estás bien._ ”

“Lance, _¡pensamos que habías muerto!_ ” That was… Alvaro? Hunk thought it was Alvaro. He’d never met Lance’s family, besides his mom, but they shared a mind space often enough that he felt he really ought to know their names by now. 

The little ones could only cry and clung tighter to Lance. 

After a few more moments of watching, Hunk started getting the overwhelming feeling that he was intruding on something. Taking a deep breath, Hunk laid a tentative hand on Pidge’s shoulder. She jerked her gaze away from their friend, blinking back tears of her own. “Let’s go find Shay and ask her about those crystals.” 

“Y-yeah. Sounds good.” 

As he led Matt and Pidge away, Hunk couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder at the five of them. He was very glad that Lance could have this reunion. But there was an unspoken tension, a kind of mourning in the air that Hunk knew came from the fact that several members of Lance’s immediate family were still missing, and by his siblings’ reactions, they weren’t still on board waiting to be processed out. His heart both ached and leapt for Lance.

They’d be okay. The rest of Lance’s family, and his family, and Pidge and Matt’s parents, and Shiro’s. They’d all be okay. 

They had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i _agonized_ over how to write this chapter. i think it went through about 18 different revisions. in one iteration, i had texan keith stumbling his way through spanish with lance's little sister XD but i ended up liking this one the best, drawing some inspiration from the walking dead (fun fact: steven yeun is the only reason i started watching voltron, yet here we are). i threw a subtle kpop reference in there, too. i still have no idea what i'm doing, and i'm sorry for another "more talk, less action" chapter and a shorter chapter to boot, but the battles are coming, i promise. i just really wanted to get this chapter up.
> 
> huge, huge thanks to IcyPanther for their help editing the conference scene last chapter! if you haven't read their story [As Color Fades Away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10515666/chapters/23208900), boy, you are missing out.
> 
> any questions or critiques? leave a comment down below and i'll get back to them asap! you can also visit me at my [tumblr](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com)! your comments are literally what keep me going <3 i still can't believe how much love this fic has gotten, and i appreciate every last view, comment, kudos and bookmark!
> 
> ===  
> Te calmas o te calmo, mijo - calm yourself or i will do it for you, my son  
> No puedo creerlo, estás aquí, estás vivo - I can't believe it, you're here, you're alive  
> Gracias a Dios, estás bien - thank God, you're okay  
> pensamos que habías muerto - we thought you'd died


	6. so eden sank to grief

“We should have never left the island.” 

In any other situation, Masina thought, the familiar mutterings of her father would have comforted her. In any other situation, she would have rolled her eyes, a fond smile crossing her lips as her mother scolded him for being such a stubborn old man. 

Now, it only served to frighten her more, because she could hear the tremor in her father’s voice. 

She clung to her father’s hand as they were marched along, her mother’s arm tight around her shoulder from the other side. Even sheltered between them, Masina felt so terribly small. The alien soldiers towered over them, guns trained on the group at large. They even dwarfed her father, an imposing man of impressive height and girth by any other standard. They moved so mechanically that Masina wasn’t sure if they weren’t actually robots. That didn’t make them any less terrifying.

They’d been walking—shuffling, more like—for hours, as the aliens rounded up more and more people at gunpoint without a word. The town wasn’t very big, so Masina recognized most of the people in the crowd. Classmates, neighbors. All looking equally as scared as she felt. 

“Where are they taking us?” Masina whispered, peering above the heads of the crowd in front of her. A massive purple ship loomed over the horizon, and as far as she could tell, the path they marched on led right to it. The crowd wasn’t silent, but everyone kept their voices down. No one wanted to be noticed.

“I don’t know,” her mother replied, her voice just as hushed. “It’ll be alright, darling. We just have to stick together.” She tightened her hold around Masina’s shoulders, offering a strained smile. It brought Masina a small amount of comfort. 

“We should have _never_ left the island,” her father muttered again, his eyes flickering to the alien sentries that lined either side of the crowd. Masina looked up at him, and even she could see the fear beneath the mutinous rage on his face. “I _told_ you moving to the mainland was a bad idea.”

And he had. It was an old argument, but one of the only times she’d ever heard her brother fight with their father. The thought made tears sting at the corners of Masina’s eyes now, hearing his impassioned voice in her ears as though the words had been said yesterday. 

Hunk—laid-back, friendly, nervous Hunk—had never once raised his voice at his father, until that day. The day he’d dropped the manila envelope on the table like he’d dropped a bomb on all of them.

“ _I’m going to study engineering at the Garrison, Dad_!” 

Masina missed her brother something awful. Despite herself, she wondered what Hunk would do, if he were here now. Probably throw up all over the place. The thought might have made her laugh, once. Now, she just thought perhaps it was more merciful that he was spared all this. 

“Life was simple on the island. Safe. None of this space invader alien business. But no,” her father continued. Masina whimpered as he squeezed her hand tighter, pulled her closer, to the point where it hurt. “My son had to go and complicate things for all of us, had to go and uproot _the entire family_ —”

“Dear, this isn’t the time,” her mother chided softly, yet there was a tense edge to her voice. Her father kept on as though he hadn’t heard her interruption.

“—just _had_ to go to that fancy school, and then what happened? He and his buddies went and got themselves _blown up_ —”

“That’s _enough_ , Sefa!” her mother hissed.

Masina winced in between them, drawing her shoulders in as though she could curl in on herself. It was bad enough that they’d lost Hunk, but she hated hearing her father blame him like the aliens invading were his fault. Her father drew his lips together in a tight line and said nothing more.

A hush fell over the crowd as they’d drawn closer to the great ship. Masina could see, now that they stood in the looming shadow the monstrosity cast, that the aliens intended to load them all onto it. There were different kinds of soldiers here, and Masina couldn’t stifle the gasp when she realized she’d been right about the sentries being robots. These new soldiers were flesh and blood aliens, tall and menacing with wicked yellow eyes, surveying the group like a farmer might his crops. 

She couldn’t help it—she started trembling. 

It started at the base of her spine and radiated out until she could feel it down to her fingertips. Her breath started coming in ragged spurts and her heart lurched unpleasantly somewhere in her throat. Fear pulsed in her veins and her feet stuttered beneath her. 

_Not now, not now…_ she thought fruitlessly. Now was _not_ the time for a panic attack. Her mother whispered soothing words in her ear, keeping a wary eye on the soldiers they passed and a steady arm around Masina’s shoulder as they made the first ascent up the ramp into the ship. 

“Just breathe, darling, breathe…” 

Masina clenched her eyes shut tight, both to clear the frustrated tears that burned her eyes and so that she didn’t have to see the ship. She focused on her mother’s words, on steadying the inhale and exhale of her breath, letting her father’s grip on her hand ground her and guide her. 

“Oho, what have we here?” 

The voice was cold and gravely, and Masina’s eyes snapped open in terror. One of the alien soldiers was peering down at her, all eight feet and some odd inches with a terrifying grin on his face. He held a hefty weapon with ease, tossed carelessly over his shoulder. Masina could have sworn she felt her heart stop dead in her chest at the predatory look he focused directly down at her.

“Look, Arzok, the whelp is so scared it can’t breathe straight,” the soldier called over his shoulder. 

She felt her father take a step in front of her and her mother, throwing an arm out protectively. “Stay away from my daughter,” he snarled with all the rage he could muster.

The laugh the soldier barked out made Masina’s blood run cold. “Or what? You intend to fight me, Earthling?” In a blink, the solider reached an arm out and backhanded her father with what seemed merely a flick of his wrist. Her father cried out in pain, the force of it sending him crashing to the floor yards away from them, taking several people down with him.

“Dad!” Masina cried, at the same time her mother shouted, “Joseph!” They both made to move to his side, but the soldier called Arzok moved swiftly, aiming his weapon directly at her father’s head. The people around the small family flinched away, clearing a wide berth around them. 

The first soldier chuckled. “Pathetic.” Masina only saw him moving toward her out of the corner of her eye, and by then it was too late. She drew in a sharp inhale as the soldier knelt in front of her and took her face in one of his massive hands, claws digging painfully into her cheeks.

“You Earthlings are so fearful. It’s delicious,” the soldier said, turning her head side to side as though he were examining a particularly interesting specimen. Masina knew she was whimpering, but she couldn’t hear it over the rush of her own heart pounding in ears. She stared into those wicked eyes, wide-eyed herself and terrified, and she cringed back into her mother as far as the soldier’s grip allowed her. 

“P-please don’t hurt her,” her mother begged behind her. Masina could feel her mother’s arm still on her shoulder, trying to pull her away from the threat. The soldier snorted derisively. 

“You’re of no use to us dead. Can’t exactly use the quintessence of a corpse.” The soldier brought Masina’s face back to center, that wicked grin never leaving his face. “Though, it’s a pity we can’t use you for arena fodder.”

The soldier clapped his leathery hand against her face once, before he finally, _finally_ let go. Masina sagged against her mother, her legs not having the strength to hold her up. The solider straightened and turned to Arzok. 

“Separate the men and women from the whelps. If they resist, subdue them, but under no circumstances are you allowed to kill. We need to get them to the Druids alive. Am I understood?” Arzok saluted and uttered something in another language.

“Yes, Commander Korok.” 

Masina looked up just in time to see one of the sentry robots grab her mother under each arm, dragging her away. She scrambled to her feet, reaching out for her as her mom writhed and screamed in the robot’s grasp. “Let her go, you creep!” Adrenaline fueled her as he pounded at the sentry’s arms, tugging and yanking.

“ _No!_ Masina! Natia!” 

Masina wheeled around to see another sentry gripping her father by both arms, easily restraining him as he struggled. Desperate tears filled her eyes as the robots dragged her parents in opposite directions. A third sentry grabbed Masina around her midsection and she shrieked in panic and fear, thrashing as hard as she could as she was lifted off her feet.

“Let me _go_! Mom, Dad!” Her mother’s words from earlier echoed hollowly in her ears—they needed to stay together! It would be alright if they just stayed together! 

Screams quickly filled the air as sentry robots filed in, dragging children from their parents and spouses from each other. Masina could feel the panic overwhelming her, but still she struggled, kicking and screaming and biting. 

Something hard cuffed her over the head, and the cacophony was suddenly muted as darkness curled in around the edges of her eyes.

\--- 

Three days. 

It’d been three days since Julio found his mother in the mess of people that had gathered in the bunker beneath the military base in Havana. Cell phone reception had been all but annihilated, and the last message he’d gotten from his mother was that she was at the base and had gotten his little siblings on an evac shuttle. 

For that, Julio thought, God was merciful. 

Those who didn’t get a spot on a shuttle had been hastened into the nuclear bunker. Julio counted himself lucky, that his fishing vessel couldn’t set sail due to choppy seas that fateful day what seemed like ages ago. Luck and luck alone had him run into his father and sister, when they’d come to find him at the docks, that they had made it into the bunker before the bombs started falling and they had to close the doors. 

Luck alone, that he’d found his mother at all, before the military had called for volunteers. 

“ _Mijo_ , please, don’t do this,” his mother pleaded. She sat on the cot she’d been given, Isabel’s arm around her shoulder as she murmured comforting words. In her lap, she clutched a broken picture frame, the glass having fallen out in the chaos when Isabel grabbed it from their home. Julio had reamed her for risking her life for it, but in the end, he was grateful, if only because of the way their mother had latched on to it. “Luis, tell him not to do this.”

His father sat quietly on the cot opposite them, and his silence spoke more than Julio thought he had words for. The man had always been one of few words, and Julio knew without him saying that were it not for his age, he’d have taken up a gun himself to join Julio and the others. 

“Mamá, I have to,” Julio said solemnly. The rifle they’d given him sat propped against the cot, a heavy elephant between them all. “We can’t just sit here and wait for… for _them_ to come find us. We have to fight.” 

Julio’s eyes flickered down to the photo in her hands, the ever-grinning face of his kid brother staring up at them from the broken frame. Julio was a terrible hypocrite—he knew Lance would be the first to take up arms against a planetary takeover, and yet if he was here, Julio would do the same thing to him that his mother was doing now. 

If Lance was here… Julio shuddered. Even in his grief, he recognized small mercies when he saw them. He thanked God Lance hadn’t lived to see the fall of Earth. Lance would have been devastated.

“It’s a suicide mission! You don’t stand a chance against these things!” his mother cried, her fingers tightening around the frame so much so that her knuckles turned white. “I can’t… I can’t lose another child, _mijo_.”

Julio’s eyes softened. “Oh, Mamá…” He reached out across the space between them, pulling her into an embrace. Isabel kept rubbing circles on her back, looking dangerously near tears herself. 

She knew that if they didn’t try, they were all doomed anyway, Julio was aware of this. He knew she knew that no matter how slim their odds were, they had to take the chance. He knew, in truth, she meant _I can’t see another child die before me_. 

“I have to try,” Julio murmured into his mother’s hair. She wept quietly into his broad shoulder, tears staining his already ruined shirt. “We don’t know where Abuelo and Abuelita and Tía Alma are. Sissy and Al and the babies are somewhere out in space. We can’t find them and bring them all home if we don’t try.”

“Jules is right, Mamá,” Isabel said, her voice a watery shadow of her usual confident self. “And he’s strong. If anyone will come back, it’s him.” She managed a smile up at him, reaching her other arm up to draw him in for a half-hug. “If you don’t, I’ll find you and kill you myself.” 

Julio huffed out a weak chuckle at that. Ever the firecracker, his sister. 

There was an announcement over the PA, then, calling for all volunteers to rendezvous at the northernmost end of the bunker. His mother let out an aborted sob, clinging tighter to Julio. It broke his heart to pull away from her after one last hug, and one more for Isabel. 

His father stood with him, placing a weathered, darkened hand firmly on his shoulder. “ _Vaya con Dios, mijo_ ,” his father said. There was a telltale brightness in his eyes, and Julio couldn’t take it—he pulled his father in for a tight embrace, as well. 

“ _Si muero antes de regresar, le pido al Dios que se lleve mi alma_ ,” Julio whispered in his father’s ear. His father only whispered _Amen_ in return, before pulling away, reaching down, and pressing the rifle in Julio’s hands. Julio took a bracing breath, squared his shoulders, and turned to leave. 

“Give ‘em hell, Jules,” Isabel called out after him. Her voice was stronger, familiar. Grounding. 

Give ‘em hell? Oh, he could do that.

\--- 

In the days since she and Florence had been plucked from her storm cellar, Colleen had come to realize a couple of things. 

The first thing was that the aliens clearly wanted them alive and able, for the most part. They’d let her leave out some food and water for Rover before forcing her to abandon him there, as long as she didn’t put up a fuss. And of course she wouldn’t—Florence couldn’t handle any roughing up, and she didn’t want to risk it. 

Besides, she’d seen what’d happened to the ones who resisted. They’d live, she was sure, but perhaps it’d be more merciful to put them out of their misery by that point.

The second thing she’d gathered was that the aliens were waiting. For what, or who, she didn’t know. But she and Florence had been herded along onto some kind of massive ship, forced to strip, and given prison garments to wear. Indignant, Colleen had done her best to try and preserve as much of Florence’s modesty as possible, the poor thing. But then they’d been shoved in a cell and… nothing. For days, if she had to hazard a guess, but she couldn’t keep track of time with no light from the outside. 

They were given water at regular intervals, and what had to be some kind of nutrient bar, if she could manage to stomach the taste of what had to be rancid garbage and roaches. They were allowed from the cell one at a time, once every three water cycles, to relieve themselves. And she didn’t think they’d left Earth, unless the ship was so large that she couldn’t feel it moving. There were about fifteen other people crammed into the cell with them, but no one seemed willing to make friends with strangers. She couldn’t exactly blame them. 

“How are you holding up, Florence?” she asked quietly, shortly after the twelfth time they’d been given water. 

“Oh, I’m an old woman. You don’t have to worry about me,” Florence replied, her eyes crinkling up in a small smile. Her voice betrayed her weariness, though, and it hadn’t escaped Colleen’s notice that she hadn’t been able to keep any nutrient bars down, either.

Colleen reached over and took one of Florence’s hand in both of hers. “I’m so sorry, Florence. You shouldn’t have gotten stuck in this mess with me.” 

At this, Florence chuckled, squeezing Colleen’s fingers between her own gnarled ones. “I can think of no one I’d rather be stuck with in this mess, dear, except perhaps my late husband. You and Samuel always took good care of me.” 

Colleen’s heart ached in her chest at the mention of her own late husband. But she was touched, truly, by the old woman’s words. She managed a smile of her own, feeling for the first time in a long, long while like she wasn’t truly alone. 

But as the hours stretched into hours, the tension between the prisoners in their cell seemed to mount. No one dared asked the guards what was happening, when they appeared briefly to give them water. Until finally, after the twenty-sixth time they were given water, they received orders, as well. 

“Form a queue,” a deep voice barked, and Colleen nearly leapt out of her skin. She wasn't the only one. Warily, the other prisoners formed a line, her and Florence somewhere near the center, and they were led to what seemed to be a courtroom. 

At the center of the room was a single chair, behind which stood five tall, cloaked figures, their faces obscured by white, bird-like masks. Something about them sent ice coursing through Colleen’s veins, and her arms came up to hug herself unconsciously. They were just standing there, and yet she already feared them more than the alien soldiers.

“One at a time; sit,” the soldier ordered. The boy at the front of the line—Colleen’s heart ached again, seeing how young he was, thinking he looked like he might have been around Matt’s age—flinched back into the person behind him. The soldier grabbed the boy by the meat of his upper arm and dragged him across the room.

“No, no, no, please, no,” the boy stammered. He didn’t resist when thrown into the chair; instead, he shrank into it, like it would protect him from whatever was coming. The rest of them were lined up along the far wall opposite the hooded figures. 

The soldier gave the remaining prisoners a menacing glare for good measure, a threat without words to stay put. He then turned back to the boy in the chair, procuring a data tablet. 

“This is a gauge that will tell me if you are lying,” the soldier said, giving the tablet a brief wave. “You are to answer the questions honestly.” 

The boy didn’t move. The soldier took it as acknowledgement, anyway.

“State your name.” 

“…Aaron,” the boy whispered, at length. The data tablet buzzed loudly, and the boy sat up ramrod straight, fear in his eyes. 

“Do not lie,” the soldier warned. 

“I-I’m not lying! My name is Aaron! Aaron Michael Cox!” When the data tablet didn’t buzz this time, the boy sagged in relief back into the chair. The soldier paused, considering the boy, before continuing his questioning. 

“What do you know about Voltron?” 

“I…” the boy looked wildly to the person who stood behind him in line. “I don’t know what that is.” The data tablet was blissfully silent, and Colleen let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. A hand brushed hers and she flinched, whirling around. But it was just Florence, behind her, reaching out a hand to hold. Colleen took it gratefully. 

The line of questioning continued, something about “the Resistance” and different planets Colleen had never heard the names of. When, after ten minutes, the data pad remained silent, the soldier waved an arm and two sentries appeared. 

“Take him to the arena. No sense wasting an able body. We’ll reap the quintessence from him later.” 

The boy looked like he might faint. “Wait, please, I answered all your questions! I didn’t lie to you, why are you doing this? Please, stop!” His voice trailed off as he was dragged away, desperate pleas echoing until they faded to silence. Colleen had to swallow past a lump in her throat. 

The interrogations continued, some being dragged off to the arena, and some being dismissed to a work camp, if the soldier’s commands were anything to go by. A handful were led into the next room by the hooded figures themselves. Colleen felt her heart racing faster and faster as the queue dwindled before her until at last, she found herself walking on unsteady legs to the chair.

From this angle, the soldier looked even taller and even more intimidating, and Colleen had to resist the urge to shrink into it like Aaron did. She still had some pride left in her, after all. So despite how she trembled, she sat up tall, her shoulders squared. From across the room, Florence gave her a reassuring smile. 

“State your name.”

“Colleen Renee Holt,” Colleen replied, her voice as steady as she could manage.

The data tablet was silent, but the soldier was not. “Tch, another Holt,” he muttered, but Colleen heard it loud and clear. “Pains in my ass, the lot of them.” 

The words left her lips before she could stop them. “You’ve met other Holts before?” Her heart still raced, but now it was for a different reason. She sat up straighter in her chair, gripping the arms so tightly she felt her fingers might break. 

The soldier leveled her with a narrow gaze. “You were not permitted to speak outside of the questioning.”

“Please, I have to know! Where have you met other—”

“Silence!” the soldier barked, and Colleen recoiled like she’d been slapped. 

“A moment,” said a quiet voice from behind her, and Colleen’s stomach lurched uncomfortably. She didn’t know how else to describe the voice but _terrifying_ , the mere tone of it making her hair at the back of her neck stand on end. One of the hooded figures moved to stand before her, and if she believed in magic she would have been sure it’d cast a hex on her, so paralyzed by fear she felt. 

The figure laid a spindly, clammy hand down on her forehead, fingers splayed open. Colleen sucked in a sharp breath as she felt the figure pulling at her mind, memories summoned forth like a slideshow. She felt her eyes rolling into the back of her head and she was helpless to stop it.

Calling Katie and Matt down from the roof well past their bedtime. Supper with her family on the eve of the big day. Meeting Takashi and his protégé, the day she sent Samuel and Matt off on the Kerberos mission. The memories seemed to pause on that last memory, her inner eye lingering on their faces against her will. 

The memories flashed forward. News of the Kerberos mission failing catastrophically. Katie insisting she could find proof that it didn’t go awry. Her and Katie fighting about sending her to a girls’ school, that it was for her own good. 

Seeing the missing cadets’ faces flash on the news, seeing her daughter’s picture there with the name Matt had given her beside her own maiden name. Seeing the footage of the explosions. There was a humming noise, like the figure found something curious, and the images shifted. 

There was her boy, and her husband, and Takashi, forced to their knees before the same kind of aliens, still in their spacesuits. Her Matt, dressed in the very same prison garb she now wore, a knife presented to him. Takashi attacking him, a wild look upon his face. Matt, a gash clear from his temple and down his cheek as he writhed on the ground before a looming enemy. A poster of Matt, labeled _enemy combatant, kill on sight_. 

When the hand withdrew at last, Colleen sucked in a gasp of air like she’d been drowning. Tears she didn’t know she’d shed streaked down her face. What little was on her stomach roiled, and with a heave she leaned over the side of the chair and retched. 

“Curious,” the hooded figure said, no inflection in its voice whatsoever. It turned to the soldier, who scowled at it. “We may desire to use her.”

The soldier scoffed. “You Druids do as you please, regardless. Take her.”

Matt was alive. Her son was alive. They wanted to kill him, and they wanted to use her to do it.

“No,” she croaked, wiping the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. The soldier and the Druid turned to her, slightly startled. “I won’t do it. You won’t use me to kill my son. You might as well kill me now.”

The soldier merely quirked an eyebrow, exchanged a glance with the Druid. “You ought to be careful what you wish for, Earthling.” 

Then there was excruciating pain. It was unlike anything Colleen had ever felt before—like every nerve in her body was simultaneously on fire and being electrified. A scream tore from her throat and she pitched forward, falling out of the chair to writhe on the floor in pain.

As soon as the pain had started, it ceased. Colleen was left panting on the floor, clenching her eyes shut. The Druid had scarcely lifted a finger. 

Colleen gritted her teeth and fought for breath, summoning the energy to glare at both of them. “Come on,” she gasped. “Kill me. Do it, because I won’t help you.” 

The pain came again, for longer this time, but Colleen was ready. She bit down on her lip, snapped her eyes shut, and clenched her fists so hard the nails dug into her palms. The Druid didn’t seem to let up this time, though, and the thought flit across her mind that maybe it would actually kill her. 

“Stop it!” 

In an instant, the pain stopped. Colleen could barely hear past the buzzing in her ears, but there was a muffled shout, followed by what could only be horrified screams from the few people left lined up along the far wall. 

A thump came only a few feet away from her, so close that Colleen felt the whoosh of air as something hit the ground. Steeling herself, she braced herself up on both forearms and managed to lift herself a few inches from the ground before she opened her eyes. 

A low moan escaped her lips. “No, God… please…” Tears sprung anew as she reached a trembling hand out.

Florence laid spread eagle on the ground between her and the Druid, her eyes wide-open and glassy. She was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we broke 1000 hits and 100 kudos with the last chapter, so faster and much longer update ahooooooooy! thank you all for all the love you've given this fic <3 i'm really excited to see the reaction to this chapter, in particular, seeing as it's the debut of more earth fam! also, yes, that just happened. nothing is sacred, no one is safe. please let me know what you think~ (this is unedited as of the initial posting, so please let me know if you spot something that needs fixed!)
> 
> ==
> 
> vaya con Dios- go with God  
> Si muero antes de regresar, le pido al Dios que se lleve mi alma- If I should die before I return, I pray, Dear Lord, my soul He'll take
> 
> Note 12/19/2017: In light of the news of Kim Jonghyun's (SHINee's Jonghyun) passing, all of my fics will be on hiatus until the new year. I'd hoped to post something for Christmas, but I'm stepping away from the Internet until then. Jonghyun was a big part of my life during my younger years. I watched him grow up. I grew up with him. His loss affects not only me, but many people I care about. The world lost a beautiful, bright soul yesterday. I need time to grieve. I’m sorry.


	7. but i have promises to keep

There was just something about the way Lance moved now that made him feel so _foreign_ , Alvaro decided.

He pressed his hand up against the glass of the observation deck above the training room, peering down at his brother training with his team. Other than Lance, only two others joined him in the sparring match, the small one in green armor and the big guy in yellow.

The three of them moved around each other so fluidly, their intricate movements akin to something like a dance. A shot here, a parry there, dodging gunfire and an onslaught of swordsmen from the dummies they whaled on. They didn’t even need to talk much, save for a few comments here and there.

“Pidge, on your six!”

“Got it!”

The green one—Pidge, he presumed—pivoted on one foot and shot her weapon out like a whip, wrapped it around a dummy’s leg, and gave it a mighty tug. Lance followed through with a well-aimed shot to the head, and the dummy went down, all the while the yellow guy sprayed a group of dummies opposite them to give them cover. Through it all, they hardly broke formation, their faces a perfect picture of collected determination. Alvaro could hardly take his eyes off Lance.

It was a far cry from the clumsy, carefree brother he’d seen off at the airport the day Lance left for the Garrison. This Lance—hyper-focused, agile, even self-assured—he’d never seen this Lance before. It was like he was looking at a totally different person who happened to be wearing Lance’s face.

Seeing Lance here, wielding a rifle as though it came as natural to him as breathing… Clearly, he’d had a lot of practice. The thought alone made Alvaro shudder—he didn’t want to think about _what_ kind of practice that exactly entailed. He still could hardly believe that Lance piloted one of those great beasts, but it was hard to deny the truth when he stood there watching it in front of him.

Hard to deny how much his brother had changed.

Abruptly, the robots ceased and powered down, and Alvaro blinked. Had he missed something?

“ _Sé que estás allí, calaca._ ”

Alvaro nearly leapt out of his skin. Sure enough, all three of the others were peering up at the observation deck, Lance’s friends squinting to see who had joined them. Lance rested the hand that wasn’t holding his weapon on his hip—wait, where’d his gun go?—and looked up with an amused eyebrow quirked at him.

Of course Lance would still have that stupid uncanny knack of knowing exactly where he was. Busted.

“Pot, meet kettle. Calling me a skeleton…” Alvaro muttered under his breath. Lance was as much of a stick with arms as he’d been the last time Alvaro had seen him. At least that much hadn’t changed.

“I heard that!”

Pidge snorted into her hand. “That’s your brother, right? You were supposed to introduce us.”

Alvaro’s cheeks burned slightly, remembering the scene they had caused in front of all those people mere hours earlier. After their collective meltdown, Lance had shuffled them all to his room on their—he called it a castle, but it was really more like a battleship. Lance had done his best to give them a brief rundown of what was going on, and promised that when the rest of the team came back, they could explain everything better. Honestly, Alvaro had barely paid attention, too overwhelmed by the fact that Lance was _alive_.

“Yeah, well, you were the one who insisted that we had to stick to the training schedule,” Lance quipped. Pidge opened her mouth to argue, but Lance held up a hand. “No, no, it’s fine! You don’t want Shiro breathing down your neck. I know he made you promise and you value your life. Even though I haven’t seen my siblings in _forever_. I get it.”

“You are impossible.”

“No, I’m Lance.”

Despite himself, Alvaro felt a small smile tug on the corners of his lips. The easy banter Lance had with his team reminded him of how things were back home. It did his heart good to see that Lance hadn’t lost his sense of humor. A thought suddenly occurred to him, just then, and his smile widened to a grin.

“Actually, he’s really Alejandro,” Alvaro butted in, staring directly down at Lance. “He only lets Mamá call him that, though.”

Lance gasped like he’d been personally offended, and the other two exchanged shocked glances. “Dude,” the yellow one said, rounding on Lance. “We’ve known each other how long now? We’re best buds. _Best. Buds_. And you never once told me Lance isn’t your real name?!”

“You dirty little traitor,” Lance muttered mutinously up at Alvaro, who just stuck his tongue out. He turned back to the yellow one, who stared at him reproachfully. “Hunk, I’m sorry! It just never came up, okay?” 

“I’ve hacked into your student account at the Garrison before, and there was not one whisper of an _Alejandro_. That’s not ‘it never came up,’ that’s actively concealing your identity,” Pidge said flatly, though Alvaro could see the suppressed amusement behind her unimpressed stare. 

“I wasn’t hiding anything. Lance is my legal English name, thank you very—wait, you did _what_ , now?!” 

Pidge shrugged one shoulder. “Basic start of the year procedure. Had to see who my classmates were going to be. But that’s not the point! The point is—”

“You know what? Fine. Fine! I admit it.” Lance cut her off with a short wave of his hand. “Yes, my real name is Alejandro, and _no_ , you can’t call me that. Not even you, Hunk.” 

“Aww, come on! It suits you!” 

“Nope! Absolutely not. And you!” Lance said, pointing an accusatory finger up at Alvaro. “You’re not my favorite brother anymore. Punk.” Alvaro snorted—as if _that_ was the first time Lance had ever said that to him. Lance huffed when he didn’t get a rise out of him, crossing his arms. “Where are the others, anyway?”

“The babies are sleeping,” Alvaro replied. “They wore themselves out with all the commotion. And Seleste’s taken over your shower. We haven’t had a chance to get properly clean since…” he trailed off, the smile melting off his face. _Since before all this began_. Just like that, the levity in the room dissipated, leaving only a heavy tension in its wake. 

Lance cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. “Yeah? We could all probably use some washing up, we smell like hot Yupper fart. Should probably hit the showers.” He pulled his helmet off then and shook the sweaty hair from where it was plastered to his face, as if to prove his point.

Eager to put the gloomy mood behind them, Alvaro took that and ran with it. “Yeah, you probably should. I can smell you all the way up here.” Even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes, he tried for a smile again. 

It was good enough; he could see the fond look Lance threw up at him, even as he muttered, “Still as much a brat as ever, I see.” The other two started for the door, and Lance made to follow them. “Head on back to the room. I’ll make a quick stop to Kaltenecker and make you all milkshakes when I get back.” He stopped, abruptly. “On second thought… you probably shouldn’t be wandering around the Castle by yourself.”

Alvaro raised a curious eyebrow. “Why?” 

“It’s haunted.” Lance suppressed a shudder, though Alvaro could see Pidge and Hunk snort at him. “Yeah, actually, you wait there. I’ll be up in a bit.” And with that, he scurried to catch up with his team, their banter echoing up to the observation deck until the doors slid closed behind them.

“Oh my _God_ , Lance, for the last time, the Castle is not haunted.”

“You say that, and yet you weren’t the one who was almost, you know, sucked out of the airlock into the soundless vacuum of open space.”

“If anything, I bet that was Alfor’s ghost exacting his revenge for you trying to woo his daughter with such awful pickup lines.”

“I’ll have you know my pickup lines are scientifically proven effective!” 

When they’d gone, Alvaro took a moment to take in the empty training deck. The dummies still lay where they’d fallen after being deactivated, strewn about the room here and there. He counted them in his head, and let out a low whistle—Lance and his friends had been outnumbered eight to one and they’d still hardly so much as flinched.

His eyes landed on the dummy that Lance had felled with a headshot, a crawling sensation up shooting up his arms as that foreign feeling returned. The shot had scorched the dummy smack dab in the center where the eyes should have been. It was a killshot if Alvaro had ever seen one. Lance hadn’t even hesitated.

Suddenly, Alvaro didn’t want to wait here for Lance. Overwhelmed by the need to be anywhere but looking down at the mess left behind, Alvaro turned on his heel and marched from the room. 

All of the corridors looked the same on the Castle, and Alvaro had only even found the observation desk by chance to begin with. Honestly, he’d just followed the sounds of the fighting, the Castle eerily quiet otherwise. It was a wonder no one got lost in this place. 

Now, he figured if he could just find the stairs he’d be alright. The training deck itself only seemed to be one level lower than the observation deck he’d been in and it couldn’t be too far off… 

Testing several doors in the immediate vicinity of the one he’d come from, he finally found a winding staircase at the end of the corridor. He descended one level, the teal lighting of the stairwell casting an eerie glow to everything. Lance’s comment about the castle being haunted echoed dully in his ears and he shivered, hastening his steps.

The corridor he emerged into looked identical to the one upstairs, with one major difference—the floor was scuffed in well-worn patterns, indicating just how much use this particular part of the Castle got. Bingo. He could just follow the scuffmarks and wait for Lance outside the locker room. Sure enough, he’d only walked a few minutes before he could hear the low murmur of conversation coming from behind one of the doors.

At first, Alvaro leaned against the wall outside the door, content to let the wordless sounds of talking and assured presence of others soothe him. But then their voices picked up slightly, talking over the sound of rushing water, and Alvaro couldn’t help his curiosity. He leaned in closer to the door, cracked open just slightly enough that he could eavesdrop on the conversation going on inside.

_“…Shiro and Allura are due back sometime tonight. Coran said Keith wanted to try and get Kolivan on board to discuss our next step…”_

_“Of course Mullet would make a pit stop. They say when they’re expected back?”_

_“In the morning. We’ll have finished the last of the modifications on the_ Auriga _by then, and Pidge has been showing the Station crews how to do the repairs themselves so we can set off as soon as everyone’s back and briefed on the plan.”_

Set off? Set off to where? An unsettling feeling sent his stomach churning, and he found that, to his horror, he already knew the answer. His mind raced with images of a massive enemy ship bearing down on them, a great robot lion hurdling through space under a hail of fire during their face off in the shadow of the moon. Knowing Lance would be in one of those, again...

He burst into the showers, feet moving before he could stop himself.

“You’re going off to fight again, aren’t y—”

Lance flinched at the intrusion and whirled to face the door, holding a towel up to his chest. But it was too late. Alvaro caught sight of the gnarled and mottled skin that crossed the expanse of Lance’s exposed back, all the way from between his shoulder blades down to his hipbones where it disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants. The scar was clearly old, fading in a grotesque gradient of pink to white to tan.

For a long, tense moment, there was silence. Alvaro could only stare, stunned, at the way Lance’s grip tightened around the fabric of his towel. Hunk—who’d stripped off his armor and stood only in the black bodysuit that they wore beneath it—glanced nervously between the two of them, biting his lip.

“I, uh. I’ll go see if Pidge wants me to fix her some dinner before the others get back.”

He left his armor where it lay, scurrying quickly from the room. Alvaro tried not to stare at his brother’s chest and arms, littered with smaller and fainter but no less visible scars. Lance didn’t give him the chance to look for very long, snatching his weathered sweatshirt from where it’d been discarded on the bench and sliding it on without a shirt.

“I thought I told you to wait for me upstairs,” Lance said. He didn’t sound angry, just… so _tired_ , which was infinitely worse. Alvaro hung his head, words stuck in his throat. What could he say to that? 

Lance sighed, plopping down onto the bench and swiping a hand over his face. “Alvaro…” he started, and Alvaro sucked in a sharp breath. Lance never called him by his full name. 

“Don’t,” he said, pleading. He knew, somehow, where Lance was going with this.

“Look, I don’t like it any more than you do,” Lance said slowly. “But you know as well as I do that someone’s gotta go fight. Earth doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.”

“But why does it have to be _you_?” Alvaro felt his hands begin to tremble where they hung at his sides, and he clenched them into tight fists. The wry look Lance shot him then made his stomach lurch again. 

“Because there is no one else. Voltron is the only thing that can stand up to these guys. You don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand!” Alvaro snapped, suddenly overcome with anger. Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. “You don’t understand what it’s been like since you’ve been gone! We thought you were _dead_ , Lance! And we didn’t… didn’t even…” 

The memory was one he’d much rather forget. Seleste had called them into the living room, the terror in her voice sending chills down his spine. But as much as he wanted to, he could never forget the feeling of dread at seeing Lance’s face beaming at them from the television screen next to two of his classmates. Could never forget any hope vanishing into thin air seeing the leaked footage of multiple explosions, and hearing how the official Garrison statement claimed that the three cadets were missing and presumed dead. 

They hadn’t even gotten a phone call. They’d had to find out on the news that their Lance, his dear brother, was gone. 

Alvaro struggled to find the words. He wanted to tell Lance how their mother had fainted there on the living room floor. How they’d had to bury an empty casket and mourn at an empty grave. But the stricken look on Lance’s face stole all the words he wanted to say, his throat working around nothing but air and he choked back a sob. 

“I’m sorry,” Lance breathed, looking dangerously close to tears himself. “I’m so sorry.”

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Alvaro pressed on. “We just got you back. I… we can’t lose you again, Lance.”

“You won’t,” said Lance fiercely, his voice thick with emotion. “We aren’t going to lose this battle. I’ve got my team with me. There’s no way we’re going to fail. We’re going to take back Earth, and I’m going to take you all home and we’re going to find our family. I promise.” He said it with such conviction, Alvaro almost believed him. He wanted so badly to believe him.

“You can’t promise that,” Alvaro whispered. He gestured vaguely at Lance, his brother’s scars still fresh on his mind. “How many times have you…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not again.

Lance pursed his lips. “You mean how many times have I almost died?” Alvaro flinched, and Lance smiled wryly. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I _didn’t_ die. I’m still kicking, aren’t I?”

“How can you joke about this?!” 

“Because that’s the only way I can get through it!” 

Gone was the smile there half a minute ago. Guilt thrummed in Alvaro as steady as his own pulse as the exhaustion settled back in on Lance’s face.

Lance ran a frustrated hand through his damp hair, averting his gaze. “I never meant… believe me, if there’d been a way for me to let you all know I was okay, I’d have done it a hundred times over already. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t put you all at risk.” He let the hand drop, opting to clasp both of them in his lap and stare at them. 

“You’ve seen a lot of shit in the last few weeks. I know you have, and I wish more than anything that you hadn’t. But that’s only a fraction of what these guys are capable of. What the Lions were thinking when they chose us, I don’t know. We’re just a bunch of kids, and half the time we barely know what we’re doing. But they must have seen _something_. A way to end this war.” 

He looked up at Alvaro at last, raw emotion in his eyes and tracks trailing down his cheeks where a tear or two had slipped past. “And we _will_ end this war. If you can believe nothing else, Alvaro, believe that.”

Alvaro was struck with sudden realization—Lance had been up here fighting all this time. Even despite Lance’s earlier explanation, despite seeing him train earlier, it took until now for it to really sink in that _Lance really wasn’t dead_ the last year and a half. He’d been fighting for them, protecting them. 

It was so inherently Lance, that the lingering foreign feeling from before flickered once, and faded away. Alvaro’s lip and shoulders trembled, and he hung his head once more, shame burning bright in his chest. 

There was a shuffling, and then Alvaro felt arms come around him. He stiffened briefly, before letting his arms come up and cling to the back of that ratty old sweater. Lance clung to him just as tightly. 

“I don’t suppose there’s any convincing you to let me come with you,” Alvaro muttered into Lance’s shoulder. Lance chuckled hollowly.

“Not a snowball’s chance in Hell, _calaca_.” 

They stood there for a long while, not saying anything else. Alvaro just wanted to bask in his brother’s presence, something he’d so sorely missed. He wondered how badly Lance must have missed—must still be missing—his family, and an idea struck him. He pulled away, reaching for his wallet.

Lance blinked at him curiously as he fumbled, wedging his fingers into the photo slot. At last, he wrested the photo free and held it out for Lance to take. Once Lance got a good look at it, his eyes went wide, and he accepted the photo almost reverently. 

“Take this with you. That way the whole family will be with you, sort of,” Alvaro said. Lance traced his fingers gently over the faces of their parents, their siblings. “You promised, right? Don’t forget it. You have to come back to us. You have to _live_.”

“I promise,” Lance repeated with every ounce of conviction he had said it with before. “I promise,” he said again.

And if everything else about Lance had changed, Alvaro prayed that one thing hadn’t—that Lance always kept his promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said i'd be waiting til the new year to post, but i've been sitting on this part of the next chapter for so long i ended up deciding to post it as a short chapter of its own for christmas anyway. i've been working on the next part almost religiously as a means of distracting myself, so hopefully it should be up soon.
> 
> if i can take a moment to be completely serious here: if you are hurting, so much so that you're considering taking your own life, i beg you, please seek professional help. or if you just need someone to vent to, i am here. i promise you, there is so much more to see in life. every day, good or bad, is worth living. i've lost so many people to suicide and it's heartbreaking because you still have so much to show the world. please, please, hang on. it's worth it.
> 
> thank you all for existing, i love each and every one of you. merry christmas <3
> 
> \---
> 
> Sé que estás allí, calaca - I know you're there, you skeleton.


	8. it's no more men i'm afraid of

Despite the dire circumstances, seeing the Castle of Lions bustling with life once more made Coran’s heart swell with happiness. 

It’d been more than a millennia since so many people roamed these halls at once. Even just in the trek from the hangars to the bridge upon their return, he’d spotted human crewmembers of the Stations intermingling with the ever-growing number of rebel fighters from the reinforcement fleet. Discussions of upkeep procedures for the new engines and stories of varied and distant planets echoed through the corridors, easing slightly the weight that came with the looming severity of the situation.

It’d been as long since he’d seen such a diverse group of people grouped on the Castle’s bridge. The Paladins stood near their stations, and the crew of the _Renegade_ milled about between them. At the helm of the controls, maps of Earth and the surrounding galaxy were marked with notes provided by the Commanders of the Lunar Stations.

Seeing the convergence on the bridge, Coran couldn’t help but wonder what the late king of Altea would think, if he could have seen where his legacy would lead. He hoped they were doing him proud.

_Alfor, my friend… are you seeing this from wherever you are now?_

Still, there were more pressing matters at hand. The journey back had been long due to their stopping to pick up the Marmora leaders, and Coran was weary, he would admit. But rest would be in short supply in the coming quintants, and he had to be a hundred and ten percent focused on their plan. He was not too humble to admit he played a crucial role in all of this. He used that happiness as a boon against the tension and turned his attention back to the conversation with a shake of his head. 

“…crewmembers can handle the repairs from here,” Pidge was saying. “The work is almost done, and more and more rebels are showing up to play defense. We’ll have plenty guarding the civilians and then some to spare for the mission.”

“Splendid,” replied the Princess. “That is one burden eased from our shoulders, then. I trust the civilians are in good hands. Which brings us to the main concern at hand…”

“Actually taking back Earth,” said Shiro solemnly, his arms crossed tight over his chest. “We can’t go at this half-cocked. The Galra have a planet’s worth of hostages they can and will use against us and we want to make sure there are as few casualties as possible.”

Coran took the opportunity to look to the guests he and Keith had acquired. The Marmora leader stood between Keith and the Princess with his mask and hood removed as a sign of respect, though his companion did not. The uneasy looks at their presence exchanged between the rebels present did not escape Coran’s notice, and he bit back a sigh. 

“Kolivan, I’m aware you’re unfamiliar with Earth and its galaxy, but perhaps you could provide some insight as to the Empire’s movements?” he asked, hoping that if he took the first step in trying to include them, the others would follow.

“Negative,” Kolivan responded, his expression grim. “Our losses during the last confrontation were great. Although Thace’s actions ensured the success of the mission, they also exposed the Blade’s efforts to the Empire with absolute certainty. Our information has all but ceased. We must operate under the assumption that all of our sources on the inside have been detected and compromised.”

“If you had to hazard a guess, then,” Coran pressed, trying not to let his optimism falter in the face of such staggering odds. “What would be your recommendation for the next course of action that would minimize the risk to the humans?”

Kolivan frowned. “Ideally, reconnaissance. Stealth is our greatest ally in this instance, and the Blade’s greatest strength. If my people could identify where the strongholds are, we could strike before they have the chance to fully establish themselves.”

“We don’t have that kind of time, though,” Keith chimed in, his brow deeply furrowed. “I get not wanting to run in there blind, but a full reconnaissance would take way too long. It’s already been weeks since the first ship landed. We don’t know if they’ve already started rounding people up.” 

It was a fair point, Coran thought, and even their calm and collected Black Paladin seemed troubled by the idea of waiting any longer than strictly necessary to initiate a counter-assault. 

“What if we started somewhere with the highest probability of Galra occupation?” 

All heads turned toward Matt, on Pidge’s other side, as he rattled out something on a keyboard off to the starboard side of the bridge. With a swipe of his hand, a three-dimensional projection of Earth appeared over the Princess’ pedestal, several points of light beaming from various points on the planet, and Matt turned to rejoin the group. 

Pidge’s eyes lit up in understanding. “Those are—!”

“All fifteen of Earth’s major aeronautical bases, and where all of the evac shuttles departed from, according to the Commanders.” Matt pointed out to one light in particular on the southwestern portion of a large continent, this one lit up in red where the others gleamed yellow. “Except the Garrison. We have to assume that’s ground zero.” 

“Why there?” the Princess asked. Coran could tell she was frustrated by her lack of insight into the Terra Firma Quadrant and Earth, because he shared that frustration. He felt so helpless—and it made him more determined than ever to rectify that ignorance when all of this was said and done.

“Because when the Garrison got the comms running on that Galra pod, they likely triggered a kind of homing beacon,” Pidge offered, continuing when Matt nodded. “Plus it’s closest to where we found Blue. If they’re tracking any residual quintessence from where she sat for over ten thousand years, that's where it’d take them.”

Hunk hummed in agreement. “The Garrison was the central hub for all intergalactic communication on Earth. It’s not too much of a long shot to say that if they did take the Garrison, they’d use it for the same purpose. Just, you know, for resurrecting an evil tyrant instead of exploration in the name of science.”

Lance straightened from where he’d been leaning against his chair, hope lighting up his face. “So if we go back to the Garrison and the Galra have taken it over, all we’d have to do is take _them_ over and we could essentially reverse-track the homing beacon out to any ships they have stationed there!”

“Back to where this all began…” Shiro murmured. He peered up at the red light, the look in his eyes utterly unreadable. Then he turned to face Kolivan, determination a fire flashing in his eyes that almost took Coran aback.

“Do you think it’s feasible for your people to infiltrate all sixteen locations at once?”

Amid the shocked exclamations from both the Paladins and the rebel crew, Kolivan blinked in surprise. “It is possible, yes, but I would not advise it. We would be stretching our already limited forces dangerously thin.”

“What if Keith and I came with you?” Shiro pushed on earnestly. Coran looked to the Princess, raising a confused eyebrow at her. She merely shook her head, not understanding what Shiro meant either. It was one of those times where Coran _really_ wished he knew more about humans. But even Keith looked like he wasn’t quite following.

“What are you planning, Shiro?” he asked. 

“We don’t have time to do a full recon mission, that much is clear. But there’s too much at stake here to make guesses and just hope for the best. If we cover all of the bases, we better our odds at being able to disable as many ships as possible before they cotton on to us.”

“But why just you and the Red Paladin?” asked Nox, face twisted in bemusement. Shiro grimaced, glancing down at his arm.

“We’re the only ones besides the Marmora who can interact with Galra technology without hacking,” Shiro answered vaguely, focusing on the hologram projection. “Once we take out their power, we can focus on rescuing any prisoners and then bring Voltron in to wipe out the Empire there.”

“It is a sound plan, Shiro,” Princess Allura said slowly. “I am just concerned about the risk of splitting up.”

“We could join you,” Olia suggested. “We rebels are used to stealth missions. If we split up into groups and pair up with at least one Marmora per team, we could—”

“No.” 

A hush fell over the room at the sharp word. Coran almost didn’t believe he’d heard truly, until heads started turning toward Friel, the Unilu flight engineer from the rebel crew. Both sets of his arms were crossed over his chest, his expression darkening more and more with each passing second.

“I don’t like it. We can’t trust them,” he said, nodding brusquely in the direction of Kolivan and his soldier. “They’re _Galra_.” 

Kolivan’s only reaction was a slightly more downward turn of his lips, but Keith stiffened, his face betraying a sting of hurt for a brief moment before he reigned it in. Coran immediately felt a swell of indignant anger on behalf of their Red Paladin, something he could see mirrored in the faces of the rest of his team.

“Uh, were you even listening to Kolivan before?” Lance asked incredulously. “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation without the Marmorites, because Zarkon would still be at full power. We’d have lost Keith if it weren’t for them.” 

“Because he’s one of them, is he not?” Friel stared down Keith in a challenge. Keith did not rise to his bait, opting to look away at anything but him. Friel scoffed. “I thought as much.”

“Hey! That’s uncalled for,” Hunk said angrily, drawing himself to his full height. “Are you insinuating that the Blade wouldn’t have done the same thing if it wasn’t Keith?”

“Are you so sure that they _would_ have?” Friel retorted. 

“Yes, we are, because they have done just that on multiple occasions,” Coran said, his voice dangerously low. It was only decapheobs of training in diplomacy keeping him from losing his temper here, now. “The Blade of Marmora has more than proven their loyalty to Voltron. I should think our word would be enough.” 

And it was true—without the efforts of the Marmora, they would have never gotten this far. Even long before Ulaz sacrificed himself to protect the Paladins at his outpost, Shiro could not have escaped captivity without his aid. And where would they be without their Black Paladin? He would not have returned to Earth, the others would not have located the Blue Lion, and Coran himself and the Princess would slumber on, locked away in the dormant Castle. There would _be_ no Voltron. He shuddered to even think it.

Nimern clicked her tongue disapprovingly at her teammate. “Now is not the time for you to act on old grudges, my friend.” She made to put a hand on his shoulder, but he batted her hand away. 

“ _Mahfaeraak hokoron Galra. Grah-zeymahzin ni kos,_ ” he hissed to her. Once upon a time Coran might have been able to work out what he’d said, but it’d been centuries since he’d heard genuine Unilu being spoken. He didn’t really need to know the meaning of the words, anyway—the tone spoke enough for itself. 

“Stand down, Friel,” Olia ordered, her voice coming out in a growl.

“ _Daar bah aus. Zu beyn aav krif,_ ” Friel continued, as if his captain had said nothing.

“Look, the Marmora are on our side, whether you believe it or not,” Shiro snapped, clearly losing his patience. Friel sneered at him. 

“ _Dukaanvos. Hun daar, Kaal_ —”

“ _Faaz nah, Friel! Ahzaal grik zul!_ ” Matt roared. He looked absolutely thunderous, and his hands shook with barely-suppressed rage. "Don't you _ever_ call him that again!" Friel appeared taken aback for a split second, his mouth opening with a retort, before he seemed to think better of it. 

Pidge took Matt by the crook of his elbow gently, shock and concern and residual anger warring on her face. Matt seemed to let the touch ground him, and he took a deep breath before speaking again. “ _Hin bah folaas. Bo nah gut._ We’ll discuss this later.”

Friel set his jaw firmly, squaring his shoulders. But at length, he bowed his head. “ _Krosis,_ " he muttered, before turning to march from the room. His glare caught Kolivan’s eye, and he made a point of bumping Keith’s shoulder roughly as he passed.

When his storming footsteps had faded, Olia heaved out a groaning sigh, running a hand down her muzzle. “I apologize for the actions of my engineer. Friel has a… particularly thorny hatred for the Galra.” Kolivan’s grave expression never faltered, but he nodded his head once in acknowledgement of the apology. 

The Princess, who had been quiet up until now, hummed in displeasure. “Allies in this war are few and far between, but our common enemy unites us,” she said quietly, clasping her hands together before her. “We will need to lead by example in moving past any prejudices we may have.”

She turned to Keith, sending a meaningful, almost sorrowful look his way. Keith bristled and crossed his arms tight across his chest without a word. Coran picked up on Allura’s line of thought, and continued for her. 

“We have all made many sacrifices for the cause. We have all lost much. But we must let nothing hinder us in our fight against the Empire.”

A long moment passed in silence, no one quite sure what to say in response to that. 

Hunk—blessed, blessed Hunk—broke the silence. “So,” he started lightly, a slight strain in his voice. “Matt. You speak Unilu?”

“Ah—yeah, I do.” Matt cleared his throat, shifting on his feet. “I speak the languages of all my crew at least conversationally, and I taught myself some Galran while I was in prison. It’s why I’m in charge of communications.”

“That is wise,” Kolivan commended, and Coran nearly jumped. He hadn’t expected the Marmora leader to speak anytime soon, not after that outburst. “Galran has been the official language of the Empire for the last 10,000 years. Comprehension is an incredibly valuable skill to have.”

“But we have communicators?” Lance said, the question clear in his tone.

“Comms can be compromised,” Matt explained. “They generally work by intent. If someone doesn’t want you to understand, you won’t. Hence…” he trailed off, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the door. “Or they can be hacked, or destroyed. But if you have the language in your head, it doesn’t matter if they want you to understand or not. The mind can never be hacked.”

“So you learned, what, five languages? Six? In the span of two years,” Pidge said, awed. Matt nodded.

“More or less. Just whatever you do, don’t ask me to pronounce Nox’s full name,” he finished. “Elyxion is a bitch to speak.”

“What is it?”

“I just told you not to ask me that!” 

“It’s Noxqokukxokxaht,” said Nox matter-of-factly.

“All right, all right, let’s get back on track,” Shiro said sternly, though Coran could see the relief in his eyes that they seemed to have put the rockiness behind them, for now. Coran himself was more than happy to let Shiro and the Princess reign in the discussion.

His eyes fell on Keith, who hung back from the group where they’d reconvened around Allura’s pedestal. While the others were pointing up at the various lights, hashing out a plan of approach, Keith seemed to curl in onto himself. A moment later, he turned and slipped quietly from the room, leaving through the door Friel had left wide open.

Coran watched him go with a heavy heart, wondering if perhaps he should have stopped him, instead.

\--- 

When Keith needed to get away, there was really only one place in the Castle that he knew most of the others dared not follow him, and that was Red's hangar. 

He sat perched atop one of Red’s massive paws, hands stained with polishing wax when Red gave the first grumble, alerting him that someone was approaching. He could feel her questioning probe into his mind, seeking out if he wanted her to put up her particle barrier to keep anyone out or not. At first, Keith was tempted to let her. But considering he had left the briefing before hearing the finalized plan, it probably wasn’t the best idea to leave himself completely closed off. There was time for that later. 

“It’s fine,” he murmured, gripping the rag a little tighter. The only person he could think of that would be awake at this hour besides himself was Pidge, though, with the earlier commotion, he wouldn’t be shocked if anyone else had trouble finding sleep, too. 

He was shocked, however, to see none of the Paladins walk through Red’s hangar door, but Matt. The usual rebel fighter suit had been replaced with a mint green sweater Keith could have sworn he’d seen Pidge wear once before, and the boy had tucked his hands into the front pocket. Matt looked nervous, Keith observed. 

When Matt spotted him, he hesitated, before coming to stand on the ground beside Red’s paw. Keith said nothing, continuing his long, even strokes of the polish, giving Matt the opportunity to speak first. It was clear he had something on his mind, and Keith wasn’t the type to fill the dead space with meaningless words like Lance did. 

At last, Matt spoke. “Hey, uh, how’s it going?” 

“Fine,” Keith replied, because it was. Going fine, he meant. 

“What’cha doing?” 

Keith raised an eyebrow at him, his arm pausing mid-stroke. Matt coughed awkwardly. “Right, you’re uh, you’re cleaning up Red.” He gave the great lion a long look-over, whistling in awe. “She looks good.” 

At that, Keith pinked, slightly. “Thanks.” 

A brief silence lapsed between them, then, Matt shifting his weight from foot to foot briefly while he worked out what he wanted to say. “Listen, I’m sorry about Friel—”

“Don’t,” Keith said, his voice coming out snappier than he meant it to. Matt’s mouth snapped shut, guilt marring his face, and Keith sighed. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. It’s not like you made him do it.” 

“I’m his superior officer,” Matt replied forcefully. “I knew he hated the Galra and I suspected he’d take working with the Blade badly, but I had no idea he would be so hostile towards _you_.”

“It’s not your fault you didn’t know that I’m part Galra. I don’t exactly broadcast it.” Matt still looked conflicted, and Keith suddenly wanted to put a stop to that line of thought. He leaned over and grabbed a spare rag from his pile and the bottle of polish, tossing it down without a word. Matt squawked, scrambling and just managing to catch them. Keith gestured to the side of the metal paw he hadn’t gotten to yet, and Matt got the hint. 

For a while, the two of them worked in silence. Not until Keith finished up his section and leapt down from the top of the paw did Matt speak again. 

“I regret it, you know.” 

Keith stopped, blinking owlishly at Matt. “Huh?”

“Not getting to know you at the Garrison, before all this happened. I regret it.” He kept his gaze focused on the rag, not daring to meet Keith’s eyes. “Shiro raved about you all the time. About how well you were doing, how proud he was of you and of being your mentor…”

Keith’s stomach lurched unpleasantly. Shiro had been committed to helping him learn during his Garrison days, despite knowing Keith’s reputation of being irritable and impossible to work with. But even he hadn’t realized that Shiro had so much faith in him. No wonder he kept insisting on Keith becoming the leader, if anything happened to him. 

“I didn’t take the time to see what he saw in you,” Matt went on. “Hell, I didn’t even recognize you when I first saw you out here.”

“To be fair,” Keith deadpanned, “you had more pressing things to worry about. Namely Pidge and Shiro.”

Matt threw his arms in the air, only barely managing to keep hold of the rag. “That’s exactly what I mean! I should have recognized you! I really should have, and I didn’t. Just because I had some petty jealousy against you back in the day, I shouldn’t have…”

Jealousy? Matt had been jealous of _him_?

Matt took a shaky breath, finally lifting his head to meet Keith’s eyes. “Did you know you were supposed to be the pilot of the Kerberos expedition, not Shiro?” 

Keith’s eyes widened, his jaw falling slack. “What?”

Matt wrung the rag in his hands tightly. “They were going to graduate you early and send you instead. Shiro was all for it. You were clearly a capable pilot, and he wanted you to have that opportunity as your first mission. But I threw a fit, because that was my first mission, too. I wanted it to be him up there with me and my dad. So he relented.”

Keith’s heart pounded in his chest. Before his racing thoughts could catch up to his mouth, Matt glanced up at Red and continued talking. “And after… when I was in prison, I was mad at myself for it. My selfishness got Shiro captured, and my weakness got him thrown in the arena.” 

Words failed him still, and Keith swallowed thickly in search of them around his dry mouth. “Why are you telling me this?” he managed at last. 

Matt let the rag go, tossing it into a pile with the other discarded ones, and turned to face Keith fully. “I guess… with this mission coming up, and with what happened earlier… well, I guess I figured I shouldn’t leave anything unsaid. So, I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. And that, you know, if we make it out on the other end of this unscathed, I want to make it right. I don’t know how yet, but… yeah.”

He put a hand on Keith’s shoulder, remorse clear on his face. Even though his mind still felt like it was sprinting at a hundred miles an hour, he thought he ought to say _something_. Anything. Apology accepted or something. But he honestly still didn’t understand exactly what Matt was apologizing for. Not being his friend? Stealing the chance to go on the Kerberos mission from him? Stealing Shiro? 

If he had gone on that mission, he would have been the one captured with the Holts. And though he was loath to admit it, the thought terrified him—he was nowhere near as strong as Shiro was. He doubted he’d have been able to sacrifice himself to the arena for Matt, doubted he’d have survived even half as long as Shiro had. 

And Matt had inadvertently spared him that.

So instead of accepting Matt’s apology, he said, “Thank you.”

Matt stared at him, slack-jawed. Whatever he’d been expecting Keith to say, that wasn’t it. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before he forced out a quiet laugh. He clapped Keith’s shoulder a couple times for good measure, before letting it fall. 

“Get some rest. Princess Allura said we’re setting off when the Castle tickers strike the twelfth varga, which was as of two vargas ago. So you’re looking at more like ten vargas or so.” 

“Sure thing.” 

Matt left him with his thoughts, then, and he stood there beneath the watchful eye of his Lion for a long time, her purring at the back of his mind trying to calm his churning mind. Only when the chime of the ticker rang out another varga did Keith finally clean up his things and start making his way back to his room. 

The walk seemed longer from Red’s hangar to his room. What was he supposed to do with this new knowledge? Should he ask Shiro about it? Did Shiro resent him, or wish that Keith had been the pilot on Kerberos after all? No, that wasn’t like Shiro at all… but still, he couldn’t help but wonder…

So absorbed in his thoughts was he, that Keith didn’t notice the presence when he stepped through the door into his darkened bedroom until there was a blade pressed to his throat and a pair of arms wrapped around him in a vice grip. He sucked in a sharp gasp, an aborted shout dying on his lips as the blade pressed tighter, digging painfully into his skin and drawing blood. He heard the figure behind him shift, felt the puff of warm breath on his ear as they leaned in. 

“ _Krii lun aus_.”

\--- 

_“We’re sorry, but your call could not be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again…”_

The tinny operator’s voice chirped at him for the eighth time in four minutes and the young man cursed, throwing the phone down in the passenger seat and pushing a little harder on the gas pedal. 

“Shit, come on, come on…” he muttered, peering into the darkness of the deserted highway. It was hard, looking for the turnoff by the light of the full moon, but he didn’t dare use his headlights. Driving at all was a risky gamble, but he was banking on the dense thickets of trees lining either side of the winding road to muffle the sound of his engine, throwing the noise all over the hills. 

Phone reception had been in and out over the last few weeks, ever since the invasion began. First it was major cities, where the population was most dense. Then it spread to the suburbs, and then to the countryside. 

Only one of his many calls had successfully gone through to his parents since then, and even then, he’d only gotten a breathy sentence out before it dropped.

“Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you!”

Honestly, he didn’t know which he hoped for more—that they’d listened to him, or that they’d gotten out to one of the evac shuttles somehow and that they were safe. 

His parents only lived a few hundred miles away in a quiet, sparsely population pocket of the country. It was less than a half-day’s journey under ordinary circumstances, easily traversed on a full tank of gas. But these were anything but ordinary circumstances. He’d taken to traveling by night, mostly in short spurts when the cloud cover allowed the absolute minimum visibility to see.

He’d hardly slept the last few days, parking his car somewhere out of the way during the daylight hours and dozing upright, still belted into his seat in case he needed to make a quick getaway. This long into the invasion, people who hadn’t been captured already were likely holed away in hiding, but he still didn’t want to risk detection, human or otherwise. 

It made his stomach turn. He wasn’t sure what would’ve happened if he’d stayed in his apartment in the city—he didn’t want to think about it.

He cursed again, tapping his thumb irritably against the steering wheel. He needed to focus. He was getting close to the turnoff now, he was sure… And then from there, it was just two lefts and a right, just a few more miles. He could see the little one-story ranch with the ivy crawling up the side in his mind’s eye… 

It happened so fast. 

A deer sprang from the darkness, and in the split second he had the young man could only think to do one thing—he swerved.

_”Shit!”_

There was a deafening crash as the car collided with a tree, shattering glass raining down on him as the metal of the car crumpled inward. The air left him all at once as the airbag slammed into him and then—

Darkness. 

A ringing in his ears brought him to, along with a high-pitched whining noise. He groaned, a blinding pain shooting up his left arm. Warm blood trickled down the side of his head and into his eye as he blinked the world back into focus. The cabin of the car was flooded with a red light—the brake lights, shit—and he belatedly realized the whining noise was the horn blaring, loud and steady like a claxon. 

He needed to get out of here. 

Rolling flat onto his back, the man took a minute to get himself oriented. The car lie on its passenger side, and he couldn’t hope to climb out the broken driver’s side window with a busted arm. The windshield had cracked, but not shattered. 

That was his only option, then. 

He braced himself against the cockeyed seat, drew his legs up to his chest, and kicked with all the force he could muster. It took three tries, but the windshield finally gave way, the cracked safety glass flying back as a whole sheet and finally shattering on impact with the pavement. 

Crawling from the wreckage and wincing at the glass digging into his arms and knees, the man righted himself, swaying unsteady on his feet. The deer was long gone, and he was fully and completely alone on the empty highway. For now. He had no way of knowing how long he’d been out. 

So he started running. Stumbling at first and gaining more speed, he cut through the trees he’d run through so many times as a child. Though it was difficult in the dark, he’d know these woods if he were blindfolded. He cradled his injured arm against his chest gingerly as he ran, trying to keep from jostling it too much. 

The sky was beginning to lighten on the horizon when he finally turned the last bend to cross onto the road where his parents lived. The next house was half a mile down the way, but on any given night, flood lamps above the garages lit the road all the way down until it curved into the underbrush.

Tonight the street was pitch dark, illuminated only by the waning moonlight that filtered through the canopy of trees.

Dread settled heavy in his stomach as he hastened toward the house. His parents’ car still sat in the driveway, though it was covered in a layer of pollen and dust that had to have been at least a few days old. Although the house seemed calm and undisturbed, the man couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly amiss.

His eyes scanned the front porch, landing on a single flowerpot, and he hurried to it. The spare key was still hidden there, and he sent up a prayer of thanks. He fumbled for it, his hands shaking violently with the adrenaline coursing through him. 

“Come _on_ …”

Finally, he wrenched the door open, almost falling in past the threshold. The house was as dark as the woods outside, and flipping the switch inside the door did nothing.

“Mom? Dad?” he called. He wished he’d thought to grab the flashlight from his dashboard before abandoning his car. The rising sun cast long shadows into the house, barely setting it aglow with an increasingly crimson light. He searched the front room and the sitting room first, the fireplace sullied with ashes long gone cold.

“Where the hell are they…”

A quick search of the bedrooms yielded no sign of his parents, although the kitchen stunk with the stench of rotting food. Charred lumps sat curdled in a pot on the stove, and the landline phone lay in shattered pieces before it. Clearly, his parents had left in a hurry.

But where had they gone without their car? Their keys still sat in the misshapen ceramic bowl on the kitchen counter.

Bile threatened to rise in his throat, and the man racked his brain for a logical explanation. Maybe they’d gone to the neighbor’s house down the road. The Coopers had a storm cellar they could have taken shelter in… 

A sharp chill ran down his spine and the hair on his neck stood on end as he was suddenly overcome by the feeling he was not alone. Without a second thought, he grabbed the keys from the bowl and turned to leave the house as quickly as he’d come. 

He was barely through the door when he stopped dead in his tracks. 

A strange cat unlike any he’d ever seen sat a few paces from the front porch, stock-still and staring at him, unblinking. _Wrong, wrong, something’s wrong_ , his mind screamed at him, but he found himself unable to move, unable to even draw his gaze away from the cat. 

“Looking for these fellows?”

Shadows shifted beyond the trees, and five beings moved into his line of sight. If he could, he would have screamed—these creatures were most certainly not human. They towered over him by at least foot, all of them. 

His eyes were drawn to the largest one, massive and bulking and menacing. But more than that, his eyes were drawn to the two people the creature held by the throat in either hand. 

His parents.

They were boneless in the creature’s grip, and the man could see their pallor from where he stood. Tears sprung to his eyes and fell unbidden, unable to blink them away. The smallest of the bunch gave what could only be described as a gleeful chuckle as her comrade carelessly tossed their corpses to the dirt. 

“Now, now, Zethrid. That wasn’t very kind of you,” said the creature in the center—the one who’d spoken before. It was said with a sneer that belied just how little he cared for kindness, and he alone stepped forward to approach the man where he stood frozen on the doorstep. Despite the inexplicable paralysis, the man felt himself begin to tremble from head to toe. 

The creature grinned as he leaned forward, his face inches from the man’s. “You are a very hard man to find, Ryou Shirogane,” the creature said. “I must say, you do look remarkably like your brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that happened 8D welcome to the fun, ryou!
> 
> an extra long chapter that was supposed to be done by the first, but life happens. thank you once again to everyone who leaves a comment, gives a kudos, and just stops by to give this a read. i hope you're all enjoying this as much as i am! happy new year, everyone! 
> 
> \---  
> (kudos from me to you if you can figure out what fictional language i used for unilu! <3)
> 
> Mahfaeraak hokoron Galra. Grah-zeymahzin ni kos - The Galra are our mortal enemies. They cannot be our allies.  
> Daar bah aus. Zu beyn aav krif - I will not stand for this. I refuse to fight alongside them.  
> Dukaanvos. Hun daar, Kaal - Disgraceful. Listen here, Champion  
> Faaz nah, Friel, ahzaal grik zul! - Damn you, Friel, that's enough!  
> Hin bah folaas. Bo nah gut - Your anger is misguided. You are dismissed.  
> Krosis - Sorry/Apologies.  
> Krii lun aus - checkmate (lit. "marked for death")


	9. better to go down dignified

_Breathe. Just breathe._

Keith allowed himself a moment to breathe, to take stock of the situation. It took extreme restraint on his part to not immediately react, but the blade of the knife still bit into his throat, and he had no desire to die a slow and painful death. The breath in his ear chuckled darkly, and a quick glance down revealed the pale green skin of his attacker. 

Friel. He really should have known. His grit his teeth and tried his best to keep still. Patience yields focus, as Shiro always said. 

“What exactly are you hoping to accomplish by killing me? You’d hurt your cause more than you’d help it. We can’t form Voltron if we’re short a Paladin, and there’s no stopping the Empire without Voltron. It’s not just Earth at stake, here. If this mission fails, Zarkon will return and all of this will have been for nothing.” Talking wasn’t his strongest suit—that was Lance—but he needed to buy time to come up with a way out of this that didn’t end up with a cut to the jugular. 

The grip around his upper arms tightened, and Keith hissed. “You sully the name of Voltron,” Friel snarled. “I will not allow my crew gamble their lives on the word of scum like you and your so-called allies. You cannot be trusted.”

The Unilu took a step backward, dragging Keith across the threshold of the bedroom back into the dim aqua light of the corridor. Keith’s pulse quickened, his heart pounding in his chest, and his breath hitched in alarm. Wherever it was Friel intended to take him, it could only end badly for him. The Castle had all but emptied out, the Station crews returning to their vessels and the majority of the rebels to their ships. 

He had to act, and he had to act _now_. He would not go quietly. “I don’t _think so_!” Against his better judgment, he reared his head back and smashed it into Friel’s face as hard as he could. 

“ _Kren sosaal_!” Friel cursed.

Keith took advantage of the distraction. In the split second that followed, he hooked his foot around Friel’s leg and delivered a swift kick to the back of his kneecap. The grip around his biceps loosened just enough for him to snap both arms up at the elbows and yank down on the arm with the knife. The blade sliced into his collarbone as it went, and warm blood instantly began trickling down his neck in thin rivulets. He paid it no mind. 

With a furious shout, Friel tightened the grip around Keith’s arms once more, even as Keith struggled to keep the knife-wielding arm pinned to his chest. He clawed at Keith’s hands and arms with his own free hand, leaving deep scratches up the exposed skin. 

“Get off of me!” 

Friel may have had an extra set of arms to use against him, but Keith was physically stronger. Adrenaline coursed like lightning through Keith’s veins, and he dropped his body weight, planted his feet firmly, and pushed with every fiber of his being. The two of them slammed into the wall opposite his bedroom door and Friel cried out as Keith dug both shoulder blades into his chest, wrestling for control of the blade. A glimmer of amethyst caught his eyes as he struggled, and for the first time, he got a proper look at the blade. 

A luxite blade, he realized. His eyes widened, the telltale insignia of the Blade of Marmora gleaming against the darkened corridor. “Where did you get this blade?” he demanded, pushing back even harder against Friel. His mind raced as quickly as his pulse. 

Surely Friel hadn’t attacked the Blade as he had Keith. None of them would ever allow themselves to be ambushed so easily. He cursed himself for ever letting his guard down. 

“They don’t call my kind space pirates for nothing," Friel choked out, a humorless laugh tearing past his lips. 

“Tell me!” Keith roared. He finally managed to twist himself so that he faced Friel. Realizing the futility of trying to keep hold of Keith, Friel relinquished his grip on him in favor of trying to push the boy off and free himself from the wall and only snarled at him in response, not deigning to give him an answer as they fought. 

Keith desperately needed to get the upper hand, and if he could just get his own blade out, he’d have it. The Unilu couldn’t activate the luxite blades the way those with Galra blood could. With a grunt, he dug his feet and pushed again, using his left shoulder to keep Friel from moving and his left arm to hold fast to the arm pinned to his chest. With his right hand, he reached back for the blade sheathed at the small of his back. 

Only for his hand to close around air. 

Sensing Keith’s hesitation, Friel gave his pinned arm an almighty tug, wrenching it from Keith’s grasp. Keith yelled in surprise and only just managed to shove himself backwards in time to dodge as Friel swung the blade in a wide arc. Keith reached back for his blade once more, this time throwing a quick look over his shoulder. Sure enough, the sheath was, in fact, empty.

He could have seen red. Friel hadn’t stolen just any luxite blade. He’d stolen _Keith’s_.

White-hot fury roiled low in his gut, as he dodged another swipe. How _dare_ Friel try to use his own blade against him. Friel’s intentions quickly became clear to him now—he planned to kill Keith and make it look like the Blade had done it. And should that fail, if Keith killed Friel now when they were alone—even in self-defense—it was his words against a dead man’s, and he couldn’t speak to Friel’s bond with his crew. Somehow he doubted they’d take his death lightly.

Weaponless as he was, Keith growled in frustration and took the only out he had—he turned and ran. Friel loosed an outraged scream and tore after him. 

Keith had spent many a sleepless night exploring the Castle when they’d first been thrust into space, wandering its many halls and poring over maps Coran provided to familiarize himself with its secrets. That knowledge saved him now, as he all but threw himself through doors and down corridors, knocking over racks and crates untouched for a millennia to try and slow Friel’s pursuit. 

But he couldn’t keep up the chase forever, and he knew it. He was beginning to feel woozy because he was still losing blood, and his legs burned with the strain of running at a dead sprint for so long. He yelped as he felt the wind brush at his back as Friel swung again, way too close for comfort, and he scrambled to come up with something, _anything_ , to get himself out of this. 

He’d never make it to the armory before he passed out—it was clear on the other side of the Castle, so that wasn’t an option. Cursing aloud, he made a mental note to start keeping his bayard on him at all times. He ducked around another corner and kicked over a barrel of what appeared to be nunvil, and it cracked open and spilt all over the floor. He almost breathed a sigh of relief when Friel stumbled, but he kept running.

Corralling the other Paladins was definitely out. If they hadn’t heard the ruckus in the living quarters, it meant they were all up and still milling about the Castle and not sleeping as Keith had thought they’d be. Short of getting to the bridge and calling them on the PA system, he’d have no way of knowing where they were. Even if he _could_ get the team together, what could they do without using deadly force? Friel had scarcely listened to his own crew earlier; somehow he doubted any of Voltron’s Paladins would have any better luck talking sense into him. 

An idea struck him, then. 

It was half-formed and a shot in the dark, but it was his only chance. Right now Keith was running on survival instinct, but he truly didn’t want this to end in bloodshed. He’d seen quite enough of that. If anyone had a shot of ending this in any sort of peaceful way, it was the crew of the _Renegade_.

He needed to put more distance between them. Needed to lose Friel’s tail and get down to the hangars. If Friel caught on to his plan, he’d be overrun. He took two lefts and a right, still knocking things over where he could. The room he needed should only be just a little bit farther…

Admittedly, it wasn’t his best plan. But as the entrance hall of the Castle loomed ahead, he sped up instead of slowing down. He didn’t have the time to make it all the way around to the stairs on the opposite side. Before he could second-guess himself, he launched himself over the rail and vaulted off the balcony. His stomach lurched unpleasantly as he fell the eight meter drop and he braced for impact as the floor rushed to meet him. 

His feet slammed into the ground first, sending shockwaves up his legs. He gasped, already aching legs sure to be bruised and throbbing later. But he kept his momentum going and rolled out of the fall, only just remembering in time to roll over his uninjured side. It was the roll alone that kept him from breaking any bones, and he fought for air through the pain. Stumbling to his feet, he half-crawled behind a pillar directly beneath the balcony he’d leapt from just as Friel came to the edge. 

“ _Bovul, niahkrin?_ ” Friel growled, loud enough that Keith could hear him heaving from the chase. “ _Siiv arhk fenal!_ ” 

Keith couldn’t actually see his attacker, but he could see the shadow he cast from above as it swiveled back and forth, as if searching. After a long moment, the shadow retreated. Keith waited until the pounding footsteps echoed into silence before he let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. 

Friel hadn’t seen him jump. Keith could hardly believe he’d pulled it off.

He sagged against the pillar, his entire body trembling and sore. _Just breathe_ , he told himself again, willing his hands to steady as he shrugged off his jacket and pressed it to the still-bleeding wound. The blood that soaked his ruined T-shirt was tacky and he’d likely have a scar to match the one from the Marmora trials on his other shoulder, but he had bigger things to worry about. 

The hangar was only another flight down from the main entrance, but he eyed the main staircase that descended down warily. If Friel was waiting him out, he didn’t want to chance walking out into plain sight. There was another way he could take that didn’t risk exposing himself, but it was the long way around. 

Not his best option, but better than the alternative. Steeling himself, he blinked through a wave of light-headedness as he straightened and began the trek to the back staircase. 

Only the sound of his own footsteps and his pulse roaring in his ears greeted Keith when he slipped through the door of the north end of the entrance hall and down back corridor. It unnerved him, if he were being honest. He pressed his jacket harder to his shoulder, focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t help his wandering thoughts, though—was the Castle really so vast that no one had heard _anything_? Where was the rest of his team, if not in their rooms? His fingers clenched around the jacket, the warmth of the blood against his palm sending terrible visions through his head. Surely… surely Friel hadn’t gone after them, too? He’d been alone with Red for so long, and the comms they used outside of battle had such limited range, he’d have no idea if… 

No, he thought firmly, shaking his head so hard his vision swam. They weren’t Galra. Friel wouldn’t have attacked them any more than he would have attacked his own crew. They were _fine_. They had to be. 

Somewhere from down the corridor behind him, quick, heavy footsteps echoed loudly. Keith jolted from his thoughts with a flinch. Friel must have realized he’d gone down and followed him down the main staircase. His head start was blown, and he didn’t have the strength to start running again. He looked frantically around and ducked into the first door to his right, rapidly pressing the hatch lock button as soon as the doors slid shut behind him. 

A shrill squeal split the air behind him, followed by a sharp gasp. 

“ _¡Dios mío!_ ”

Keith’s head snapped up and he belatedly realized he’d hidden in the lounge. Across the room, two kids had jumped to their feet in front of the sunken couch, a little boy stepping in front of the girl protectively, glaring up at Keith. Without thinking, he held his finger up to his lips and they both froze. 

Keith’s hand slid along the wall to the light panel and he flicked the switch, immediately dousing the overhead lights and leaving them in nothing but the eerie aqua glow of the emergency light panels. Pressing an ear against the door, he breathed shallowly as he listened and waited and _prayed_. The footsteps grew louder and louder still, and for a brief moment Keith wondered if he imagined the hesitation in the steps and then—

And then they passed, growing fainter as they stormed into the next hallway until they faded entirely. Keith forced the bated breath past his lips and he felt his legs give out underneath him. His back hit the door and he slid down it, heart thumping wildly in his chest. After gulping a few lungfuls of air, he turned his attention back to the kids before him. 

Even if Keith hadn’t recognized them from the many mind-melding exercises he’d done with the team—at this point, he was pretty sure he knew the others’ families better than he knew his own—anyone with eyes could see that these kids were related to Lance. The boy looked like a miniature version of his older brother, and both of them shared the same striking blue eyes and sun-kissed skin. When it became apparent that Keith meant them no harm, the little boy loosened his stance slightly, though he still seemed wary. The girl looked frightened, and she tucked herself behind her brother, but concern was clear in her voice when she spoke. 

“ _Señor, ¿está bien? Está sangrando._ ”

It took Keith a solid ten seconds to comprehend that she wasn’t speaking English, and he bit back a groan. He’d forgotten that they’d had mixed success getting the comms to work with the children from the Stations—apparently they didn’t know that they were supposed to project their intent to be understood. They just talked. 

“Uh, I’m fine. Yo… bien.” He racked his brain for any Spanish from his middle school days, but he came up short. “Lance? Hermano? Where is he?” Hopefully they’d understand him, even if he couldn't understand them. 

It must have worked, because the boy launched into an explanation. Keith honestly only caught the words kitchen, milk, and Kaltenecker, but that was enough to fill in the blanks. This time he did groan, letting his head fall against the metal door with a soft thump. 

So there was a murderous alien on the loose, Keith felt like death warmed over, and now two innocent kids were in danger, while Lance was off making milkshakes. That would be just his luck. 

Despite knowing it was futile, he reached for the comm still clipped to his belt with his free hand and brought up to his face. “Lance, can you hear me, man?” He waited, but only static greeted him. He tried again, and once more, before he grunted in frustration and flicked the switch on the comm back to interpretation. He _really_ needed to talk to Pidge about amping up the range on these things. He got that the ones they used in the Lions were a higher priority, but this? This was a problem.

“All right, I need you to listen to me, okay?” he started, sitting up from the door with a wince. Stopping was a bad idea—every muscle protested him moving right now. The kids nodded, staring intently. “There’s a… a bad guy on the ship, but you’ll be safe if you stay in here. I’m going to go get help, so when I leave, I want you to press this button and wait for Lance to come back.” He gestured to the hatch lock. It was a bit high up, but the boy could probably reach it on his tiptoes. “Tell him Keith is going down to the hangars, and to get his bayard and alert the others. He’ll know what you mean.” 

“ _Dile a Lance que encuentre a sus amigos. Entiendo,_ ” the boy said dutifully.

Keith got the gist of it, and while it wasn’t quite what he meant, it was close enough. Lance would get it. “Leave the lights off, stay quiet, and don’t open the door for anyone but Lance. Not even me. Understand? Comprendo?” 

They both nodded again earnestly, eyes wide in fear. Keith wasn’t good with kids, but he mustered up the most reassuring smile he could manage and hoped it didn’t look too much like a grimace. “Todos bien. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” 

He used to the door to get back to his feet, and though the ache that gripped him from head to toe still lingered, the brief respite did help a tiny amount. His legs felt steadier, in any case. With one last glance back at the kids, he took a deep breath and pressed the hatch lock release, allowing the door to swing open. 

Where Friel was waiting for him on the other side. 

Caught off guard, Keith couldn’t react in time as Friel’s second pair of arms reached up and grabbed him by the collar, lifted him physically off his feet, and threw him into the wall opposite the door. He slammed into the wall and it stole the air from his lungs, rendering him unable to do anything but crumple to the floor. The kids screamed from inside the lounge.

“Sh…shut the…” Keith gasped. They had to shut the door. God, they didn’t need to see this. 

Friel grinned wickedly as he dragged Keith so that he laid flat on his back and straddled him. He pinned Keith’s arms beneath his knees and used his free set of arms to hold him down by the shoulders, clearly taking perverse pleasure in the way Keith cried out when Friel dug the heel of his palm into the wound. 

“ _Krii lun aus_ ,” Friel said again. “One less Galra besmirches the world.” He raised Keith’s blade high above his head in both of his free hands, and Keith clenched his eyes shut tight, waiting for the blow. 

It never came. 

Instead there was the sound of a solid _thwack_ , followed by a soft clatter next to his hand. Keith’s eyes snapped open. Friel had spun his head around and glared over his shoulder, where Lance’s little brother stood barefoot in the doorway, a second shoe in his hand primed for throwing. 

“ _¡Déjalo solo, cretíno!_ ”

Many things happened all at once, so fast it felt almost as though it happened in slow motion. Friel’s expression grew dangerously cold in icy rage, and Keith’s heart stuttered in his chest. In the instant Friel turned to face the children, Lance’s brother faltered, his childish anger melting into terror. The shoe slipped from between the boy’s fingers.

“ _NO!_ ” Keith bellowed on a heaving breath, at the same time a Lion’s roar shook the ground beneath them all. Red. With renewed adrenaline, Keith drew his knees up under where Friel was still half-crouched over him and planted a mighty kick with both feet to Friel’s chest. Friel tumbled to the floor beside him, and Keith scrambled to flip their positions, keeping Friel pinned down to the floor with all the strength he had left, knocking the blade out of both of their reach. 

He threw a desperate look over his shoulder at the kids, still rooted in the doorway in fear. Hiding wouldn’t do them any good, now. “For God’s sake, _run!_ ” he shouted. 

They didn’t need to be told twice. Lance’s brother grabbed his sister by the hand and dragged her down the hall, running blindly in any direction away from the fight. Keith struggled as Friel swatted and writhed under him, and Keith prayed that the others would get here soon. There was no way they hadn’t heard Red, and they all knew she only reacted that way when her Paladin was in danger.

One of Friel’s free hands caught Keith beneath the jaw and jammed up with an open palm, snapping Keith’s head back and knocking his teeth together. It was enough for Friel to shove Keith off and get to his feet, and he kicked Keith in the gut for good measure. Keith choked and doubled over where he lay on the floor, strength leaving him like sand through a sieve. 

“You should have gone quietly,” Friel said, disgust dripping from his tone as he calmly walked over and picked up the discarded blade. He must have realized Keith had very little fight left in him, because he started to play with the knife, spinning it around the hilt between his fingers. “But I know your kind. I should have known better. You will fight to the bitter end.” Here he paused, his gaze turning down the hall the kids fled down. 

“But perhaps… I could persuade you to do the job yourself.” 

He tossed the knife down so it landed a few inches from Keith’s face, clattering as it hit the ground. Then he spun and chased after the kids. 

Keith’s stomach flipped. Lance would never forgive him if anything happened to his siblings. He’d never forgive _himself_. “No,” he breathed again, and without a moment’s hesitation he reached for the blade, dragged himself to his feet, and sprang down after Friel as fast as he could push himself to go. 

He followed the footsteps, the soft and rapid pitter-patter of children’s feet hitting the floor against the long and heavy strides of Friel. The corridors opened out, ceilings going higher and walls more broad, and Keith felt the dread lurch somewhere in his throat. 

“No, no, no, don’t run that way,” he muttered under his breath, willing the children to go any other direction. He could hear the hum of electricity even before he rounded the corner and through the door into the generator room. The sweltering heat from energy arcs slammed into him—they almost never came into this room without the temperature regulation of their armor. If it was this bad for him, he could only imagine how bad it was for the kids. A shout snapped his attention to the far end of the room. 

Lance’s brother had already crossed the span of the room and stood before the doors at the other end. He must have jumped the gaps in the platform. His sister, however, was nervously inching her way across the narrow catwalk that spanned either side of the gaps. She was about halfway, and behind her, Friel, only a few paces away. He approached her slowly, almost as if bored.

“ _¡Vamos, Clara!_ The boy screamed desperately. “ _¡Prisa!_ " Keith wasted no further time, sprinting with everything he had to get to her first. 

But it was too late. 

Friel grasped the girl by the scruff of her shirt by the time Keith had leapt over two of gaps. She shrieked and kicked as she was lifted and dangled over the only gap that stood between them now, and Keith drew up to a sudden halt. 

“What will you do now, scum?” Friel sneered. “It’s either you, or you and the girl. Make your choice.”

Keith heaved, fury and fear and overwhelming panic swirling in the pit of his stomach. Think, think, he had to think! The boy was shouting at them from the other side, no doubt terrified that he was about to lose his little sister, and the girl still struggled, frightened tears streaming down her face. 

“ _¡Gabe, ayúdame!_ ” she whimpered, her hands scratching weakly at the grip that held her up.

“Will you quit squirming,” Friel snapped, giving the girl a shake. She shrieked again, and Keith could hear the seams of her shirt giving way. He had an idea, but it wasn’t a good one, and he needed Friel to not understand. He needed Lance, and he needed him _now_.

Matt had said if he didn’t want someone to understand, they wouldn’t, right? Still, just in case, he reached into the deepest recesses of his memory and pulled out a language he hadn’t used in many, many years. 

“게이브,” he called, willing himself to be understood by the kids and only them. The boy’s head jerked up. “니 이름 게이브, 맞지?” The boy nodded, his eyes going very wide. “니 형을 찾고 데려와. 빨리.” 

“ _Pero—_ ” Gabe started. 

“가라고!” Keith snapped, and Gabe didn’t protest again. He disappeared through the door on the other end, and Keith turned his attention back to Friel and the girl. Friel narrowed his eyes at him.

“Speak to be understood, or I will not hesitate,” he threatened. 

“She’s a little girl,” Keith retorted, “and she’s frightened. She doesn’t understand with the comms. I’m just trying to soothe her, alright? I’ll do what you want, just—just give me a minute.” He was banking on Friel not knowing the difference between Korean and Spanish. Friel quirked an eyebrow at him but said nothing further. 

“클라라, 맞지? 클라라야, 내 말을 알아들어?” he said, lowering his voice in something close to comfort. The girl sniffled and nodded. “잘 들어. 아쩌씨랑 한 번 게임 해줄래? 침묵게임 하는 거야. 아쩌씨가 삼까지 세고 클라라야는 눈을 감고 움직이지마. 뭐든지 들어도, 누구든지 뭐뭘 말해도, 절대 움직이면 안 돼. 알겠지?” 

The girl nodded again, staring at him with wide eyes. Keith nodded back, offering a small smile. “그래, 잘 했어. 아쩌씨가 지켜줄게. 걱정마.” He was stalling. But the others would be here. Lance would be here any minute. He believed that. 

“That’s quite enough,” Friel barked. “What’s it going to be?” 

Keith took a deep breath. “Put the girl down and I’ll jump.” He tossed his knife to the side as an offering, showing that he wasn’t going to fight back. Friel’s eyebrows rose even higher, but he didn’t move to put her down. “I said, put her down.”

“You really think you’re in any position to be making demands?” Friel scoffed. “Jump first and I give you my word the girl will live.”

“I will not risk her life on merely your word,” Keith ground out, using Friel’s earlier words against him. “Put her down, _now_. I won’t ask you again.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, there was a flash of blue. Keith could have cried in relief, seeing Lance enter quietly through the door Gabe had fled through. Lance was still in his street clothes, but he held his bayard at the ready. Keith saw the moment when Lance noticed his little sister dangling above her doom, a storm of rage and dread warring on his face, and then their eyes met.

 _I won’t let anything happen to her_ , Keith thought, willing his expression to convey all what words couldn’t say. Their bond was not as strong when not in Voltron, but Lance seemed to understand anyway, because his face evened out. He nodded once and took aim. 

“Fine,” Keith relented to Friel. “I’ll jump first. But believe me when I say that if you so much as hurt a hair on her head, you won’t make it out of here alive.” To Lance’s sister, he said, “클라라야, 준비?” She nodded once more, covering her eyes with her hands. 

“하나… 둘… 셋!”

Keith leapt, not down but forward, wrapping his arms around the girl as a shot rang out. He tucked the girl against his chest and turned her head towards him, making sure she didn’t see the spray of blood as the blast tore through the back of Friel’s head, didn’t see the way his body went lax and plummeted.

And then they were falling, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was that action-packed enough for everyone? 8D 
> 
> thank you to everyone who stops by, who leaves a comment or a kudos, and who bookmark and subscribe. you are all the reason i'm super stoked to share this chapter--it's been the most fun by far to write, hours upons hours of research included! this will likely be the last update until march at the earliest, as i'm going to be very busy in february between work and moving and going out of the country on holiday. i might try and write on the plane (between coming and going i'll have 28 hours to write, theoretically) but in the past i've not had much luck with this so... yeah. 
> 
> please feel free to leave your thoughts or critiques in the comments~ thanks again for all your support, and i hope you enjoyed!
> 
> ==
> 
> Translations for this chapter can be found here: [Chapter 9 translations](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com/private/170240473999/tumblr_p3ad22qNjB1wwtjk3)
> 
> Text to audio for those who can't read Korean can be found here: [Korean Text-to-Speech](http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/speak/korean/)


	10. one step backward taken

“And then we all pile on Kaltenecker and we’re out of that place like a shot!” Lance cackled. He dropped one of the buckets of milk onto the counter with a flourish, his bayard following soon after. “I’ve never seen a cow move so fast in my life! Left that dope of a security guard in the dirt.” 

“A flying cow,” Seleste deadpanned. She eyed the weapon curiously as she placed the second pail of milk down with considerably more care. “That’s a new one. I always thought the saying went, ‘when pigs fly,’ but there’s a first time for everything, I guess.” 

Lance paused in his rummaging through the cabinets for glasses to send a joking glare over his shoulder. “You don’t believe me!” 

Alvaro snorted. “Gotta admit, bro, it sounds pretty ridiculous.” He leaned back onto one of the kitchen islands opposite them, propped up on both elbows almost lazily. Lance just rolled his eyes and turned back to the pantry. 

“Alright, alright, you got me,” he admitted. “She _might_ have been assisted by a cow-sized hover board. Doesn’t make the whole ordeal any less wicked, though. You ought to try it sometime.”

Finally finding the right cupboard, Lance pulled out all of the glasses from the shelf. He glanced over, gauging the amount of milk they’d collected from Kaltenecker, and put a few back. If the crew of the _Renegade_ wasn’t invited to the milkshake party this time, well, he’d make it up to them later. Assuming there _was_ a later. He shook his head and forced the thought aside.

“In any case,” Lance continued, setting the glasses out on the counter next to the pails, “it worked out well for us. Coran got his scaultrite lenses, Pidge got her game, and the rest of us? Free. Milkshakes. For life. Plus, Kaltenecker is a great listener, which is a nice bonus when you need to vent about eating goo for the seventh day in a row. ” He casually scooted his bayard a bit further down the counter to make room for more glasses. 

“Sorry,” Seleste said suddenly. Lance turned to quirk an eyebrow at her. “But, what is that thing, exactly?” She nodded at the bayard. Lance stilled, the easy grin faltering somewhat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alvaro flinch. 

As much as Lance really didn’t want to lie to his sister, he didn’t want to frighten her, either. Usually he didn’t carry his bayard on him in the safety of the Castle—especially when he wasn’t wearing his armor, where he could dematerialize it instead of physically carrying it around—but given the events of the last few days, he felt better having it on him.

He supposed a little white lie wouldn’t hurt. Just so he didn’t scare her.

“It’s my weapon,” he said carefully, turning back to the glasses and partitioning out the milk. He forced himself to keep his voice even, ignoring the flash of fear that darkened his sister’s face. “I always have it on me. You never know when Allura will spring a surprise drill on us to keep us on our toes. Nothing to worry about.” It was half true, anyway, but they didn’t need to know that Allura hadn’t drilled them in months.

Seleste said nothing, clearly not entirely convinced by Lance’s explanation. He could almost feel Alvaro’s deep frown boring into the back of his neck. Lance bit his lip.

“So!” he said loudly after a beat, clearing his throat. When he turned to face them, it was with a smile he hoped didn’t look too forced. “I was thinking. We should take the babies to meet Kaltenecker once we’re done with this, since I’ll have to drop you all off with Shay come morning. What do you say?” 

His siblings exchanged a wordless, worried glance. Not for the first time, it broke Lance's heart that they got dragged into this mess. He never wanted this. Not for them. 

Seleste sighed, moving from where she’d crossed her arms almost protectively over her chest to grab an empty glass from the counter, offering it out to Lance. “I think they’d enjoy that,” she said softly. It was an olive branch if he’d ever seen one—he really should have known better than to think she wouldn’t see right through him as she always had, but she had the grace not to push the topic. For that, he was grateful. His gaze flickered over to Alvaro, whose frown still lingered, but had softened. The forced smile eased into one that felt closer to being genuine. 

“I volunteer one of you two to be the one to wake them,” Lance said, taking the offered glass. His fingers lingered on his sister’s, just briefly, in silent thanks. “Because I sure as quiznak don’t have the heart to.” 

The two youngest of his siblings had slept right through being moved to the lounge after Lance had returned from his mission briefing. He almost hadn’t wanted to leave them there, would much rather have waited until their nap was through. But their time together was running short, and he _had_ promised them milkshakes. He was nothing if not a man of his word.

If he’d taken an extra moment to drape a couple of blankets over them and brush the hair from their eyes, though, hardly anyone could blame him for it.

“Eh, I’ll do it,” Alvaro said with a shrug. At last he moved to join them, grabbing the empty pail and setting it out of the way on the floor beside the counter. “Just the mention of sweets should be enough to get them—”

A roar split the air, then, and the floor beneath them shook. Lance felt the unmistakable cry of the Red Lion deep in his bones as his eyes went wide and unseeing. Panic that was not his own flooded his veins, setting his heart racing wildly. Echoes of frightened screams rang in his ears, and his breath caught in his throat. 

“ _NO!_ ”

The glass Lance held slipped from between his fingertips and clattered with a metallic clang on the ground, its contents spilling at their feet. 

“No,” he breathed. 

“What was that?” Seleste asked, her voice trembling. She looked at Lance, who stood horrorstruck and rooted to his spot. “Lance, what _was_ that?” As if coming from a trance, Lance turned to face them for only a brief moment as his body caught up to his racing thoughts. He stood only a second longer, before he snatched up his bayard and sprinted for the door. 

“Lance!” Alvaro called in alarm. 

“Stay where you are!” Lance shouted over his shoulder. He saw them move to follow him, and his heart lurched. He had no idea what lie in wait for him—he could not let them come. “I said, _stay put_!” For good measure, he brought his hand down on the hatch lock behind him, ensuring they stayed in the relative safety of the kitchen. Their cries of confusion and fear chased him down the hall, but he paid it little mind. They’d stay safe in there. 

He focused now solely on getting to the lounge, driven forward by the ghost of Keith’s pain he’d felt and his own adrenaline. The terrified screams of his baby siblings were unmistakable and if whatever was after Keith got to them too… He couldn’t stifle the shudder that ran up his spine as he raced through the halls.

“Please be okay, please be okay, _please_ be okay…”

The kitchen wasn’t terribly far from the lounge, but every step felt like miles to Lance. When at last he skid around the corner, he drew up short, skidding to a halt as a dreadful gasp tore past his lips. 

In the dim light of the corridor, the gruesome scene looked like something straight out of a horror flick. Blood smeared down the wall directly opposite the lounge, a pool of crimson congealing beneath it. Large drops of it trailed in a sporadic line that led further down the corridor, past the corner he’d come from and deeper into the heart of the Castle. Lance staggered, air rushing out of him all at once, when he noticed the two tiny sneakers abandoned outside the door, one mere inches from the pool of blood. Keith and the babies were nowhere to be found.

The taste of bile burned at the back of his throat, and it took a concentrated effort on his part not to get sick right there.

Fury and dread simultaneously surged in him. Lance took a deep breath to quell the nausea. He brought he bayard up and let it form, the familiar weight of his blaster a grounding, but empty comfort. Whoever did this would _not_ get away with it. Of that, he would make sure.

Following the blood trail seemed as good a place to go from there as any, and Lance moved with urgency, but not as quickly as he had before. Now that he knew for sure he had someone with ill intent on his hands, he had to proceed with caution. There were too many unknowns; who would do this, how they got on the Castle to begin with, if there was more than one person behind it. His palms grew damp with nervous sweat and he cursed, alternating hands as he wiped them on his jeans. 

The blood trail wound through the corridors and Lance cursed once more when he realized where they were headed. Despite his best efforts to remain calm, terrible visions danced through his head, all the worst-case scenarios. Before he had the chance to follow through, though, the empty halls echoed with the distant sound of pounding feet. His head snapped up to his right. 

He contemplated his options. Keith was clearly injured—Red had made that crystal clear with the vision she’d shown him, and the image of the bloody corridor would definitely haunt his nightmares for ages. Did he follow the blood trail and hope he didn’t find Keith’s mangled corpse at the end of it, or did he follow the footsteps and perhaps apprehend the one responsible? 

With a growl of frustration, Lance turned away from the trail, praying Keith could hold his own. If this person was still running loose, he had to stop them before they hurt anyone else. Or thing. It could be a thing. He really didn’t want to think about it.

The footsteps grew louder with every passing second, and Lance kept the sight of his blaster lined up. But there was something peculiar about them. It didn't sound like boots hitting the metal floor, and the steps were rapid and light. Still, he couldn’t let his guard down. He moved as stealthily as he could toward the steps, hoping to catch whoever they belonged to by surprise.

Sure enough, the footsteps grew close enough that it was only a matter of seconds before they rounded the corner and ran straight into Lance. He drew in a short breath and held it, finger twitching on the trigger, waiting for them to show themselves. _Steady, now… aim…_ They were close enough now that he could hear the heaving pants.

Lance almost pulled the trigger. 

But then he saw the shock of familiar dark hair in his scope and he recoiled, as his baby brother stared down the barrel of his gun, frozen in sheer terror.

“ _Gabriel_!”

Relief and guilt flooded him and he dropped his bayard instantly, the blaster reverting to its dormant state. It clattered to the ground as Lance rushed forward to embrace his brother, swallowing past the sting of hurt when Gabe flinched away reflexively. 

“It’s okay, Gabe, it’s just me… It’s Lance…” he hushed, pulling him in closer and stroking his hair. The tension melted from Gabe’s shoulders immediately, and he buried his face into Lance’s shoulder and began to weep. Lance held him fiercely, drawing in a deep breath, before holding him out by the shoulders and inspecting him for injuries. 

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” 

Gabe shook his head rapidly, tears flinging from his cheeks with the force of it. “I’m not hurt. But Clara…!” he hiccupped. Lance’s heart stopped. “He got Clara!”

“Who got Clara?” Lance asked sharply. Gabe shivered. 

“The bad guy! The bad guy who hurt your friend! He got her and he was gonna throw her down the place with the lightning a-and your friend, he told me to come find you!” 

Oh, god. Oh, _god_. Lance's hands began to tremble. But he had to stay calm, for Gabe. “What did the bad guy look like? Can you tell me?” 

Gabe gulped for air, nodding through his tears. “He was green, and he had four arms, and he could only open one eye—” 

Lance hissed. 

Friel. Of course it was him. That bigoted piece of… Lance bit back a string of curses that threatened to spill from his lips.

“Gabriel, listen to me,” he said firmly, holding his brother’s shoulders a little tighter. “Where did you leave them? In the lightning room?” Gabe gave a tremendous sniff and nodded again. “Was the bad guy facing toward you or away from you when you left?” 

“A-away,” Gabe stuttered. “Your friend was facing me. He said something a-and it sounded funny, but I could understand him. He said to come find you,” he said again. Good—that meant that if Lance went through the door Gabe had come from, he’d catch Friel unawares. If he hurried, he’d make it before anything else happened. The alternative was… unbearable. 

“You did good,” Lance said softly, stroking Gabe’s hair once more. “You've been so brave, Gabe. Can you be brave for me one more time? I need you to run back to the kitchen. Just keep following this hallway until it ends and then turn right. There’s a button outside the door that will let you in. Sissy and Al are there waiting for you, okay? You’ll be safe there with them.”

“But Clara—!” 

“I’ll save her, Gabe. I promise.” Gabe looked unconvinced, and Lance ruffled his hair in a way he hadn’t in so long. “Lance always keeps his promises, remember?” 

Gabe didn’t manage a smile, but he wiped the snot from his nose with his sleeve and nodded. Lance’s heart ached, and he pulled Gabe back in for another tight hug. He _really_ didn’t want to let him go off on his own again. But if it really was Friel behind all this, then he could at least rest assured knowing that it was unlikely he was working with anyone. 

“Go now,” Lance urged, pushing him off in the direction he’d come from. “I’m going to go save Clara.”

“And your friend?” Gabe asked weakly. Lance nodded. 

“And my friend. Now, go.” 

Gabe tore off, glancing once more over his shoulder back at Lance before he disappeared into the darkened Castle. Lance didn’t hesitate long before he reached for his bayard and took off in a dead sprint in the direction Gabe had come from. He wasn’t far—he just had to pray he wasn’t too late.

Keith’s voice echoed down the hallway as he approached, slowing only enough that he didn’t alert Friel to his presence. “ _I will not risk her life on merely your word. Put her down,_ now. _I won’t ask you again_.”

Making sure his blaster had formed, Lance rested his finger on the trigger guard and slipped in through the door. 

Even with Gabe’s warning, he wasn’t quite prepared for the sight that awaited him. His stomach lurched at the sight of Keith, bloodied and bruised and grotesque, but his eyes zeroed in on his whimpering baby sister as she dangled helplessly above certain doom. That same fury and dread must have shown on his face, because Keith’s gaze flickered over to meet his own. 

_Trust me_ , he seemed to say, though he didn’t say a word. And Lance did trust him. Keith had a plan, he could tell. Lance took a steadying breath and nodded imperceptibly, drawing his bayard to his shoulder. 

“Fine,” said Keith, turning back to Friel, determination set like stone upon his face. “I’ll jump first. But believe me when I say that if you so much as hurt a hair on her head, you won’t make it out of here alive.” He lowered his voice and said to Clara, “ _Are you ready_?” If Lance weren’t utterly terrified that he was about to lose his baby sister, he might have been curious about the fact that he knew Keith wasn’t speaking English, but somehow understood him anyway.

“ _One…_ ”

Lance thumbed the power gauge on his blaster to _kill_.

“ _Two…_ ”

Slid the safety off, and drew a deep breath.

“ _Three!_ ”

This time, Lance pulled the trigger without hesitation. 

His aim was true, without a shadow of a doubt—Friel didn’t even have time to cry out before he slumped, lifeless, over the edge. In the same breath, Keith leapt, and Lance only had time to see him grab Clara from Friel’s limp arms before they both disappeared into the chasm. 

“NO!” he screamed, his bayard falling abandoned once more from his grasp as he crossed the gaps in the platforms. They couldn’t have fallen, they just couldn’t—

He heard Keith’s grunt of pain before he reached the platform and he almost cried in relief when he saw Keith’s hand, hanging on for dear life where he’d caught the edge of the platform. In his other arm, he had Clara tucked protectively against his chest, her arms looped desperately around his neck. He could see the way Keith’s whole form trembled from the strain as they swung with the force of the fall. 

Lance immediately flopped down onto his stomach and reached for Keith’s arm to haul them both up, but Keith shook his head. “Take her first!” 

“What?” Lance gaped. “I can get you both up, just hang on!” 

Even as he spoke, Keith kept shaking his head. “Lance, I can’t—this is my bad arm, I’m losing her, just _grab her!_ ” Clara whimpered once more and clung tighter, and Keith hissed. Lance finally got a glimpse of what he meant—Clara’s chin dug into a nasty wound to his neck that kept bleeding, bleeding down his bare left arm and he saw how she was slipping from his grasp—

Without arguing any further, Lance relinquished his hold on Keith’s arm and grasped his sister under both of hers. She squealed in terror when Lance tried to pry her loose from Keith’s neck, clinging ever tighter. 

“Clarita, let go. I’ve got you,” Lance urged, trying to be equal parts soothing and forceful. “I’ve got you, it’s okay, you just gotta let go, _pajarita_. Grab on to me, that’s it…” 

Finally, he managed to loosen her grip enough that he could hoist her up. Clara transferred her grip to Lance’s wrists, and Keith gave her a boost from below as best he could. Her feet kicked at the air as she scrabbled for purchase on the platform. 

In the chaos, her knee met the crook of Keith’s right elbow. 

It all happened so fast. Lance could only watch in horror as Keith’s grip gave out, fingers grasping fruitlessly at the air, and he plummeted. 

“ _Keith, no_!”

He couldn’t even reach out to try and catch him. For a gut-wrenchingly long moment, Lance was sure the utter fear in Keith’s face as he fell was the last thing he’d ever see of his friend. Then he blinked and a streak of electric-green light shot through the darkness, cutting through the cyan glow of the lightning arcs. 

Lance’s head snapped up, wide-eyed in disbelief. 

“Pidge!”

\--- 

Pidge prayed she wasn't too late. 

Her bayard soared through the air weightlessly and she counted the seconds with bated breath and increasing panic. One Mississippi, two Mississippi….

There was a yank, and suddenly Pidge was being pulled forward from the weight of Keith on the other end of her line. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she cried, and her heart thrummed in her throat as for a split second, she thought she might be pulled over the edge, too. 

“I got you, Pidge!” 

Arms snaked around her middle and pulled back with a mighty grunt. Pidge let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Thanks, Hunk. I owe you one.” She could feel Keith dangle at the other end of her bayard, but she didn’t dare chance a look. “Keith! Are you alright down there?” 

“Just fine,” he called back up, his voice cracked and slightly higher pitched, which meant he totally was Not Fine. But he was alive, and he wasn’t falling to his death, which was a plus in her book. 

“Help me pull him up,” she said to Hunk, who didn’t need to be told twice. He braced his hands on hers as she retracted her bayard, only letting go to help hoist Keith up when he was close enough to the top to reach for the platform with the arm not twined in the cord. Hunk paused for a split-second, his face going white as a sheet. Half a moment later, Pidge saw why, and she hissed.

The blade end of her bayard bit into the flesh of Keith’s left hand, fresh blood swirling down and mixing with the caked on blood there already, and his shoulder was obviously dislocated from the force of being caught mid-freefall. Once Hunk pulled him up and safely over the platform, Keith flopped listlessly and let out a heaving sigh of breath, and Pidge could see the mottled, already-purpling bruises and deep-gouged scratches littering Keith’s arms. His stomach fared no better, a sliver of it exposed where his T-shirt rode up. 

“Oh my god,” Pidge breathed, and Hunk retched beside her. “What _happened_ to you?”

Keith just shook his head, clearly exhausted. “I’m fine,” he ground out, letting his eyes fall closed. 

“ _Fine_?!” Pidge nearly screeched. Keith winced at the tone, and she brought her voice down, still no less incredulous. “Christ on a cracker, Keith, you are anything but fine!” 

“Well, I’m not dead or lying at the bottom of… wherever this place goes. So, there’s that,” Keith said, attempting for nonplussed. The tremor in his voice betrayed how shaken he truly was. “…how did you find us here, anyway?” 

“We ran into Lance’s little brother in the halls,” Hunk said weakly, wiping at the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. Pidge looked over across the span of the gap to see Lance sitting there watching them wordlessly, clutching his sister tight against his chest as she sobbed. He looked like he might have been in shock. “He wasn’t making any sense, and my Spanish isn’t great to begin with, but I caught ‘lightning room’ and figured we’d better come here. Good thing we did,” Hunk added, a visible shiver running down his spine. 

Keith let out a breathy chuckle, utterly humorless. It sent goosebumps up Pidge’s arms. “Yeah, well, that’s another thing I’ve got to thank him for, then. Kid’s got nerves of steel and one hell of an arm.” Pidge opened her mouth to ask him what he even _meant_ by that, but he’d already let his head flop to the side so that he faced Lance. “Is she alright?” Lance didn’t respond right away. 

“Lance?”

Lance blinked, then shook his head. “I… I think so…” Lance replied, his voice meek and strained. “She won’t say anything, and she’s covered in blood but she won’t let me check her.”

“Don’t worry about the blood,” said Keith, “it’s all mine, probably. I don’t think she hit anything on the way down…” Like she was covered in something completely harmless and not _his blood_.

“ _Christ_ , Keith,” Pidge said again. She knelt down beside him, reaching forward to untangle Keith’s arm from the remaining length of cord. She winced when Keith groaned as she pulled the bit from his hand. “I’m… quiznak, I’m sorry, Keith, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Keith said all in a rush. “Really. Better this than the alternative, right?” Pidge definitely had to agree with that. He turned his head back to face her, eyes glistening with something unreadable. “Where’s your brother?” 

“Matt?” Pidge blinked in confusion. What did he have to do with any of this? “I don’t know. He said he had something he needed to do before the night was over, left us in Green’s hangar ages ago…” she sucked in a deep breath. “You don’t think…” 

Keith hastily shook his head, and then grimaced, like he _really_ regretted doing that. “No, it wasn’t Matt. But we, uh, will definitely have some explaining to do when we see him next.” He withered slightly under Pidge’s intense gaze, eyes not quite meeting hers. 

“How about explaining, like, right now?” Hunk asked. He wasn’t pushy about it, but Pidge could tell he was worried, even as he helped Keith to sit upright. “You look like you lost a wrestling match with a klanmurl.” 

Keith managed to sling his arm over Hunk’s shoulder for support. “To be honest, that almost sounds pleasant by comparison.” Pidge leveled an impatient glare at him, and he sighed. “Look, in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not feeling too hot right now and I’d rather not tell the story twice. Let’s just… go find Shiro and Allura and fill them in.”

Pidge did not like this, not one bit. He seemed way too calm for someone who almost just bit the dust. “But—” 

“We don’t have time for this,” Keith interrupted quietly. “We’re supposed to be leaving for this mission in less than nine varga and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m going to need a pod. I’d rather not slow us down any more than I have to, alright?”

Pidge huffed. “Fine. Let’s get you straight to the infirmary, then.” Keith opened his mouth to protest, but this time Pidge cut him off. “You said you didn’t want to waste time, right? Hunk and Lance can get you to the infirmary. I’ll go find the others and bring them there.” Hunk nodded earnestly in agreement.

Keith wisely closed his mouth. “Sure,” he said instead, and Pidge laid her hand on what she guessed was probably the least injured part of him, his right shoulder. 

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she whispered. She didn’t stick around to hear his response, quickly getting to her feet and leaping over the gaps they’d crossed and back out the door they’d come through. 

Where even the others might be, Pidge didn’t know. She headed first toward the bridge, figuring that if Shiro and Allura were still up, they’d probably be going over strategy there. Or, they would have been, before Red alerted them all that something was terribly amiss. 

Becoming acutely aware of her trembling hands, she twisted her fingers together and fought not to wring them. The trembling spread up her arms and to her shoulders, down her spine and through her legs until her knees almost clattered as she walked. Tears burned the back of her eyes and she blinked them back furiously.

They’d come so close to losing Keith… if Red hadn’t shown them what danger he was in, if she’d arrived even a few seconds later… 

Coming to a halt, she quickly took off her glasses and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her sleeve. Keith was fine. Well, okay, not _fine_ , but he wasn’t dead. She needed to pull herself together and find the others so she could figure out what had happened to her friend. There was no use for useless tears right now. 

Why couldn’t she stop shaking? 

She wasn’t sure how far she’d gotten, or how long she stood there crying in the middle of the empty corridor, but she nearly jumped when she heard voices echoing down to her.

“ _…last saw him in his Lion’s hangar. He said he was going to turn in soon. Did he even make it to his quarters_?”

“ _We’ll check. Check the training deck and the hangar again, too, just to be on the safe side._ ”

“ _The Castle could not have been breached. The alarms would have alerted us to an intruder._

“ _Doesn’t rule out an accident, Allura, you know that. We’ve all been stressed lately…_

Pidge gave a tremendous sniff and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms. Deep breaths, Pidge, she told herself. If anything, she really ought to count herself lucky that the others had already found each other, thus making her job a whole lot easier. 

Still, she didn’t feel particularly lucky. 

“Guys,” she called, turning on her heel and heading for the direction the voices were coming from. The discussion stopped, and hurried footfalls drew closer, until Matt, Shiro, and Allura rounded the corner, almost barreling her over in their haste. 

“Pidge, thank goodness you’re here. Have you seen— _oh my god, is that blood_!?”

Casting a glance down at herself, Pidge realized that it was, in fact, blood. It coated her knees and shins where she’d knelt beside Keith, stained her hands where she’d freed him from her bayard. Matt was beside her in a second, hands coming to rest gingerly on her shoulders. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t worry,” she said hastily, seeing the frantic worry in his eyes. “It’s not mine. And yes,” she said, addressing the three of them at large. “We found Keith. We need to go to the infirmary, he’s… he’s in bad shape. Hunk and Lance are getting him there now.” 

Shiro sucked in a sharp breath, going white as a sheet. “What do you mean, ‘bad shape’? What happened?” 

Pidge shook her head. “I don't know. He wouldn’t tell us until we got you guys, and Lance was too much in shock to be of much help in that department.”

“Where was he?” Allura asked, sounding equal parts demanding and as though she might faint. 

“In the generator room, with Lance’s little sister,” Pidge said. She waved at them impatiently, gesturing for them to walk and talk. If Matt noticed the red rimming her eyes, he didn’t mention it. “Me and Hunk got there just in time. Any later and we’d have had one large order of French-fried, crispy Keith.” She tried for humor but came up short, and she couldn’t help the shudder that ran down her spine. She bunched her still-trembling hands into fists at her side. 

“Then we should waste no further words,” Allura said, pushing in front of the group and leading the way to the infirmary. The trek to the infirmary was silent, except for Matt periodically asking Pidge if she was really unhurt. She appreciated his concern, but it was grating at this point, and it took all her good grace not to smack his hand away where it rubbed circles on her back. All she really wanted to do was see to it that Keith made it into a pod, and then go hide out in her room where she could _freak the hell out_ in peace. Maybe take a shower while she was at it. She was barely holding it together as it was. 

The infirmary was quiet when they walked in, but not silent. To Pidge’s surprise, Coran was already at Keith’s side, wiping down the expanse of his arms and chest with a rag to clean up the blood and see the extent of his injuries. He’d already been stripped of his clothes and stuffed halfway into the white coveralls, the upper half pooled around his hips while Coran worked his magic. Hunk was holding him from behind, keeping him upright on the cot and murmuring comforting words when Coran brushed over a particularly nasty cut. 

“My dear boy, you have taken yourself quite the beating,” Coran was muttering, almost more to himself than to Keith. “A number of lacerations on your arms, and that nasty little cut on your neck, yes… oh, your shoulder will definitely need resetting before you go into the pod, but there’s nothing to be done about your ribs ‘til then, I’m afraid. Just a tick more, almost done…”

Shiro let out a tiny, distressed noise and rushed over to them.

On a different cot, Lance’s little sister sat stock still, frightened tears still trickling down her cheeks sporadically. She’d been cleaned up already and was wearing Lance’s zipped up jacket as a dress, stripped out of her ruined one while Lance stood at the washbasin attempting to clean it. She couldn’t see his face.

Matt’s hand stilled on her back, and when she peeked up at him, his face was twisted into an expression of horror. Honestly, she could relate. Allura gazed upon the room, and from what Pidge could tell, she didn’t know where to look first.

“Would someone please explain to me what happened here this evening?”

Her voice, while steady, was terse with concern and fear. That something like this had happened under their noses… again, Pidge understood. She really did. All eyes fell on Keith, who shifted uncomfortably under their gazes. Coran paused for a hair’s breadth of a second in his ministrations, before quietly going back to cleaning Keith up. 

“…I was attacked,” Keith said quietly, at length. “In my room. They got ahold of my luxite blade and tried to drag me off somewhere and kill me with it.” He seemed reluctant to say more, and, Pidge noticed curiously, his eyes flickered to Matt. Was that… did he look almost _guilty_?

“That’s not possible,” Allura insisted, going ramrod straight. “The Castle didn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. It would have sensed if any intruders came aboard.” Keith flinched, and Pidge glared at Allura, who seemed to realize her misstep right away. “That is… I mean, not to say that I think you’re lying, but…”

“Did you see who it was who attacked you?” Shiro pressed. Keith bit his lip and looked at the floor. Oh yeah, definitely guilty. But why? If he was attacked, then why would he feel guilty? And where was this attacker?

“It was Friel.” 

All heads snapped toward Lance. His knuckles were white where they gripped the sopping dress, his back still turned to them. They could see the rigid tension in the square of his shoulders. 

“Friel?!” Matt gasped. He gaped at Lance, before turning back to Keith. “That can’t… Keith, is this true?” 

Keith nodded, clutching the sheet of the cot tightly in his fist. Pidge could see the exhaustion in Keith’s face, could see the regret and anxiety glisten in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never meant for it to end this way. I tried, I really did. I had to run, I tried to run to come find you to talk some sense into him but he just kept _following me_ , and he was going to try and make it look like the Blade had done it—”

Pidge stared. Keith was babbling. Keith _never_ babbled, not like this. Honestly, it freaked her out, even more so than she already was. Panic radiated off him in waves, and Pidge wondered how she’d missed it before. Maybe he wasn’t handling this as well as she thought he was.

“—and then I found Lance’s brother and sister, and if that kid, Gabe? If he hadn’t thrown his shoe the way he did, Friel would have killed me right there, he was _so close_ —”

“Keith, what are you _talking_ about?” 

“—I couldn’t let him hurt them, so I-I offered to jump and I—I just. I’m so sorry, Matt. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. I tried to come find you. Honest. I never wanted him to die—” 

And there it was. 

Matt’s fingernails dug into Pidge’s back, and she winced. Even Coran stilled completely, the bloody rag almost falling limp from his hand as he stared at Keith. Hunk gaped, wide-eyed and disbelieving, between Keith and Matt, and Shiro had gone even whiter, if that were even possible. Allura just looked stunned.

A pin could have dropped in the room, and it would have sounded like a gong. 

“You _killed_ him?” Matt choked out. 

“No, _I_ killed him.” Once again, all eyes turned to Lance. He’d turned to face them all, now, and Pidge was honestly startled to see he looked… totally calm. The complete opposite of the shell-shocked Lance she’d left in the generator room.

“Lance…” Hunk murmured, not quite sure what to make of the situation.

“Don’t blame Keith when it was all my doing.” The utter calmness that Lance spoke with genuinely scared Pidge. Without meaning to, she leaned closer into Matt’s side. “It was him, or Keith and my sister. It was entirely justified.”

“That wasn’t your call, Lance,” Shiro said at length, reprimand clear in his voice, though Pidge could tell by the tremor in it that he was shaken by this turn of events. 

Just like that, the calm façade on Lance’s face broke, a dark, seething look settling over it like the tide. Pidge almost flinched. “That’s _bullshit_ , and you know it, Shiro!”

“Lance…!” 

“No! That monster beat the living daylights out of Keith, almost murdered him _and_ my little sister, and you try to tell me that it wasn’t my call to take him out before he actually succeeded? I’m not buying it!” He heaved for breath, his tanned face ruddy with righteous anger. “And if you wanted a _pragmatic_ answer, Keith’s a Paladin, just like the rest of us. No Keith, no Red Paladin. No Red Paladin, no Voltron. No Voltron, Zarkon is revived and all of this will have been for _nothing_!” He was screaming by the end of it.

All of them were stunned beyond words, but Lance wasn’t done yet. He turned to Matt, taking a shuddering breath. 

“You can’t tell me,” he started, voice dangerously low, “that if he’d attacked Shiro, if it’d been Pidge dangling by her collar over that edge, that you wouldn’t have done the same thing.” 

Matt tensed beside Pidge, his face contorting with conflicting emotions. Pidge had a sneaking suspicion that Lance’s words had hit right on target. For a long moment, there was utter silence, save for Keith’s staggered rasps as he struggled to reign in his panic. No one knew what to say. 

“Lance…”

Pidge nearly leapt out of her skin when the tiny voice broke through the silence. She’d almost forgotten Lance’s sister was in the room. The way she looked at Lance—wide-eyed and frightened, like she’d never seen that side of Lance before—Pidge wondered if she didn’t have the same expression on her own face. Lance seemed to snap out of his furious rage, the fire smoldering to a low-burning ember. He threw the ruined dress down in the basin and crossed the room to his sister, scooping her up into his arms. Pidge thought for sure he would just storm from the room right then and that be the end of it. She was almost right. 

He made it as far as the door, before he stopped and turned around again.

“I’m not proud of what I did. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life, however short it might be,” he said. He met the eyes of every person in the room, some flinching away, and others, like Pidge, forcing themselves to keep his gaze until he moved onto the next person. She wondered if she was imagining the way his chin quivered. 

“But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. For any one of you, because you’re my family. And _no one_ lays a hand on my family.” 

And then he was gone, leaving shock in his wake. 

No one moved. It felt like no one breathed. Pidge felt an uncomfortable knot in her chest where Lance’s words had dug in. Gazing around, it seemed the others hadn’t fared much better. 

When it seemed the tension would surely snap, Coran cleared his throat. “Yes, well.” He paused, looking over at Keith, still cradled up against Hunk’s chest. “Alright, then. Number Two, would you be so kind as to help me get Number Four into a pod, please?” 

Hunk blinked, taking a solid ten seconds to recover from the verbal tongue-lashing Lance had given them all before he nodded. “What? Oh, yeah, sure. Of course.” He shifted, easing Keith the rest of the way into the coveralls.

“I’m sorry…” Keith murmured, over and over again. “I’m sorry…” The worst of the panic seemed to have faded, but he’d fixated on the apology like a mantra. 

“No more of that, now,” Coran assured, taking Keith’s other side and helping Hunk steady the boy on his feet. “That’s it, up you go. We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

Pidge didn’t like how pitiful he looked. Keith was the strongest person she knew, besides Shiro. And probably Allura. Seeing him reduced to, well, _this_ , was unsettling at best. Beside her, Matt straightened his shoulders, resolve (or resign, Pidge really couldn’t be sure) crossing his face. 

“Where are you going?” she asked. She winced—she hated how small her own voice sounded.

“To tell the rest of my crew what happened,” Matt said, low and raspy. “I can’t hide this from them.” He turned to Allura, crossing his arms across his torso. “I don’t know how they’re going to take it. Friel had his faults, but he was family to us, too.” Allura physically recoiled, but composed herself in a manner befitting a princess. Pidge was kind of jealous. 

“Of course,” she said quietly. “I… must admit even after our earlier disagreement with him, I never imagined that things would turn out this way.” 

“We never do,” Matt said, his lips twisting into a wry smile. 

“Do whatever you must,” Allura said. “If the crew no longer feels safe here, if they’d rather bow out of the mission, they will go with my blessing. Their—all your efforts thus far have been greatly appreciated and I give you my deepest thanks.”

That startled Pidge. When Matt turned to leave, she caught him by the arm. “You’re coming back, right?” she asked, alarmed. Matt couldn’t meet her searching gaze. She gripped his wrist a little harder. “Matt? You’re coming back with us, right?” 

“Take care of your crew, Katie,” he murmured, dodging the question. “I have to go take care of mine, for now.” He gently pulled her hand off, quietly slipping from the room. 

“Matt!”

She chased him out into the hallway, just passing the threshold of the infirmary but going no further. Something compelled her to stay, to just stand there and watch as Matt retreated into the darkness of the Castle’s night-cycle. He would be back, she thought fiercely. He had to come back. She just found him, after all this time. He would be back… right?

Dimly, she heard Shiro asking Coran about how long Keith would need to be in a pod for this time. Dimly, she heard Hunk say he was going to go check up on Lance. It was conversation that seemed so normal for them. She knew she’d heard it all before. 

So why did everything feel so much different, this time? Why did she feel like she’d lost something very important, and—almost more importantly—how much more was she going to lose before this war was over?

\--- 

The witch sneered down at the trembling human her Druids had brought before her. Annoyance might have seeped through her skin, might have settled into her very bones, as the bitter taste of failure still lingered in her mouth. But unlike the pitiful soldiers, her Druids did not waste her time. They would not have brought her something that she would not find of use. She allowed her fingers to dance along the human’s skull, relishing in the first taste of fear that spiked through from their consciousness. 

“Hmm…” she muttered aloud as she perused the human’s memories. “I see my Druids were correct in telling me you have some… potential.”

“I will not bow to you,” the human spat, and really, Haggar was not even in the slightest bit fooled by the false courage. She could feel the way their eyes moved underneath the blindfold, searching for any peek of light through the dark cloth. Haggar cackled. Memories of lightning and fire flashed to the forefront of the human’s thoughts. Ah, she thought. So they’d been roughed up a bit. No matter.

“No need to bow,” she crooned, her voice a mockery of a soothing mother slipping into a leathery hiss. “Not when I can make you kneel.” She flicked her wrist in a downward motion, and the human gasped as they fell to their knees against their will. 

“Very good, very good…” Yes, this human had potential indeed. Perhaps not direct potential… but with the images of her Champion burned in this human’s brain, she found she could be patient. This was a good lead. She flicked her wrist upwards. “Rise.” Again, the human rose, this time with a startled cry. 

“Now…” Haggar said, circling the human like a predator, their prey. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We have an important appearance to make. Why, with your presence, I see no reason why we shouldn’t find an audience with one Officer Holt, hmm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and i am _back_ , friends and enemies! we made it to chapter ten! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> thank you all for your patience over the incredibly long wait! i am thrilled to be working on this again, i've missed writing it! (though i definitely didn't miss all the stress of being back home... can i go on vacation again and just... stay there?) i'm super excited to see what you all think of this chapter as things progress forward. and it's an extra long (and, thus, initially completely unedited) chapter to make up for the wait. also, i tried very hard to convey the complex emotions of something like this. what they just went through is quite traumatizing for all involved! 
> 
> i have to admit i'm a little nervous from here on out, because i still haven't sorted a lot of really important things that need to be addressed sooner rather than later, but hopefully the threads will all come together in the end. and if they don't, well, that's why your feedback is so important to me! i do welcome concrit, so if you see anything not adding up or any glaring typos or whatnot, please do feel free to let me know. until next time, friends!
> 
> EDIT: I've made an official timeline for the events up through Chapter 10! [Click here](https://glitteringconstellations.tumblr.com/private/173118694049/tumblr_p7gy2iN9Er1wwtjk3) for the link--the timeline is represented in graph and list form for your ease of reading. Please note: the days are approximate. I did not have a concrete timeline in my head when I wrote this story. The important thing is the order in which things are happening, as between chapters we jump around A LOT with little indication as to where we are in the timeline. From here on out, timeline-wise, it should be pretty linear, or otherwise will be noted where we are on said timeline.
> 
> ==
> 
> pajarita - little bird


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